


The Light Side, The Dark Side, and everything in between.

by In Genny um (Genna_Bella)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Bakugou Katsuki Swears A Lot, Crossover, F/M, Freeform, Jedi!Midoriya, Jedi!Shouji, Jedi!Todoroki, Jedi!Yaoyorozu, M/M, Republic!Iida, Republic!Jirou, Republic!Kaminari, Republic!Kirishima, Revanite!Dabi, Revanite!Hawks, Revanite!Shigiraki, Revanite!Toga, Sith!Aoyama, Sith!Bakugou, Sith!Ojiro, Sith!Tokoyami
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-03-09 23:12:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 35,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18926929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Genna_Bella/pseuds/In%20Genny%20um
Summary: Newly graduated Padawan Izuku Midoriya is sent along to Tatooine under the guidance of a powerful Jedi Master, and the company of a Jedi Guardian with a dark past and a prideful Jedi Sentinel to find lost slaves being held under imperial supervision.Apprentice Mashirao Ojiro becomes the first apprentice to Darth Katsuki Bakugou, and the first sith of his race. Taken along on a ‘rescue’ mission led by his master with a short fuse and overseen by two additional sith lords, one clad in darkness and the other radiating with faux sparkling.Captain Tenya Iida of the republic military and his trusty Lieutenant are forced to team up with two smugglers from the outer rim in order to find a lost republic cruiser rumoured to be holding incredibly important cargo.Commander Tsuyu Asui is tasked with training a bright young Imperial sniper whilst juggling the annoying chore of babysitting two bounty hunters employed to help her find some lost slaves on Tatooine.The four individual parties have vastly different ideas and agendas. Unfortunately for them however, these personalities will have to come together to achieve the mutual goal of keeping the galaxy in balance.





	1. Jedi - Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
> 
> A young Jedi has just completed his training and is thrown into the uncertainty of battle!
> 
> With a powerful Jedi Sage leading the party as his makeshift mentor, a Jedi Guardian with a troubled and dark past and a Sentinel that would rather see him working in the Jedi records department on Coruscant.
> 
> Will the young Jedi manage to be a help to his party?
> 
> Or will his blind, good-natured heart get the better of him?

The quick, heavy tip taps of the young Jedi's boots echo around the temple corridor as he rushes towards his former master, Master Yagi. Master Yagi finishes his conversation with a young raven-haired woman who acknowledges the young Jedi's presence.

The lady has her hair up in a side ponytail with equally black eyes to match her hair's shade and fair skin to bring out those features expertly. She wears the vestments of a Jedi master consular, only hers are red in colouration and show much more skin than the standard issue consular robes. Attached to a rather beefy light yellow belt is a sleek lightsaber, telling anyone with basic knowledge of the Jedi order this woman was a Jedi Sage.

“Izuku Midoriya?” She asks, her tone kind and benevolent.

“Yes, he’s my most recent Padawan.” Master Yagi introduces the unfamiliar face to his fellow master Jedi.

The female master looks down to Midoriya's belt. “He carries a lightsaber, how can he still be your Padawan?”

“Ah! Sorry, he only got that two days ago, I keep forgetting he's completed his training.” Yagi corrects himself awkwardly, for being such a brilliant knight he surely had his moments. “Young Midoriya, this is Master Momo Yaoyorozu. Easily one of the best Sages the Jedi has access to.”

“You flatter me, Master Yagi.” Master Yaoyorozu places her hand to her generous chest.  
“It's a pleasure to meet you, Master Yaoyorozu.” Midoriya quickly bows, nearly tripping over his own robes in the process.

“It's unlike you to train a consular, Yagi. Is Izuku special?” Master Yaoyorozu inquires.

“I observed him training one day a year or two ago and thought to myself, _‘I want that boy as my Padawan’_.” Master Yagi gives the brief recollection of his first encounter with Midoriya. “Of course it was difficult teaching him practical skills, with him being a Shadow and all.”

“I can still hold my sabre the right way up, Master!” Midoriya jokes, making Master Yaoyorozu chuckle.

“I suppose having it double-edged is a bonus then?” She jokes back making Midoriya smile. “Enough talk now, do you know why you were called?”

Midoriya shakes his head, looking over to his former master for the correct answer.

“Well, we’ve had intelligence on an imperial slavery camp in the middle of Tatooine for quite some time now. Recently, however, the occupants are reported as being prepared to be moved off-world by our scouts in that area.” Master Yaoyorozu paces, Midoriya listening tentatively as he fumbles around his pockets for a marked book and pen, taking notes on the brief.

“You uh, don't need to do that.” Master Yaoyorozu awkwardly laughs. “I’ll be accompanying you on this mission, me and two other Jedi.”

Midoriya's eyes grow wide, two other Jedi as well as Master Yaoyorozu? These slaves must be very important then. Since Izuku was a Shadow and Master Yaoyorozu was a sage, does that mean the two other Jedi are Knights or Consulars? Izuku hoped they were Consulars in the back of his mind, he could show all the sages his aptitude in the Force Cloak. He could find all the slaves in no time by going invisible past the imperial guards!

He also hoped they could be Knights, to watch actual republic knights fight would be amazing! And if they were both Sentinels wielding dual lightsabers? The team would be crazy unstoppable!

“Calm yourself, kid. Don't let your enthusiasm blind you.” Master Yagi laughs at the young Jedi who was practically bouncing off the walls at this point.

“Is he often like this?” Master Yaoyorozu lowers her voice to ask Master Yagi who awkwardly shrugs her off. “No matter, shouldn't the other half of our party be here by now?”

“Speak of the devil and he shall appear I guess.” Master Yagi mutters whilst looking over Master Yaoyorozu's shoulder at a large man, 6’2ish and generously built.

He runs through the hall, skidding to a stop when he sees the three. “I apologise for my lateness.” He says, huffed. Bowing about three times before righting himself.

The man takes off his hood but not his mask, revealing angular white hair only showing one black eye. “The bloody droid delivering the message just said to meet with you Masters, no time or place given. I've had to do three laps of the entire temple and sweep rooms to get here!”

“It's okay, Mezo.” Master Yaoyorozu puts a hand on his shoulder despite him being a clear foot taller. “Meet Izuku Midoriya, he just finished his Padawan training and is coming with us for support.”

The Jedi looks Midoriya up and down, the small green haired consular cowering with fear at the leering figure with way more experience and way more presence than Midoriya could even hope to have.

“Fear is a Sith attribute. You know that?” He informs Izuku.

Midoriya nods his head slowly, righting himself and taking a few deep breaths.

“Now I remember you.” The Jedi says like a light in his head just flickered on. “You're the little shadow that force bent a boulder into me accidentally.”

“T-that was you?” Midoriya trips on his words, the fear he had dispelled coming back to hit him in the chest full-force.

“Please, calm yourself, Shoji. I’m sure it was an accident.” Master Yaoyorozu frowns. “It’s unhealthy to hold grudges, and not the Jedi way.”

“Grudges? It happened _last week_!” Shoji folds his arms, annoyed.

Master Yaoyorozu’s focus shifts to Midoriya who gives an awkward smile.

“How can we trust a kid who can’t control the force correctly? He’s the same age as me for crying out loud!” Shoji protests to the two masters.

“That’s because he was only welcomed to the Jedi order at eighteen! You’ve had more opportunities to excel youngling, do not forget your place in the force.” Master Yaoyorozu scolds, making Shoji back off.

The attention diverts from Midoriya quickly when another Jedi joins the group. His hair is two-toned, right side a white with a light blue tint and the left side is a dark red. His eyes are also different colours, right eye a lighter black than Master Yaoyorozu’s and left eye a bright gold. His left eye also has a burn scar over it which interests Midoriya.

The man is wearing the armour of a Jedi Guardian, the standard issue with no apparent changes, a single lightsaber hangs from his belt. “Good morning, Master Yaoyorozu.” He gives a brief bow, looking up to take note of Shoji, Midoriya and Master Yagi’s presence.

“Seeing as you’re all here now, I might oversee some more of the Padawan’s training in the temple yard.” Master Yagi bids the four farewell, “You have this, right Yaoyorozu?”

“Of course Yagi.” She smiles and quickly bows, “May the force be with you.”

He nods and gives a bow of his own, walking away hurriedly to his own business. Master Yaoyorozu looks over to her now complete party. “Shoto Todoroki, have you been acquainted with Mezo Shoji and Izuku Midoriya?” She asks the two-toned Jedi who looks the others over again.

“I believe I know Shoji, you’re the Sentinel that saved a family of natives from the Flesh raiders on Tython during the raid a few years ago. Impressive stuff for a sixteen-year-old at the time.” Todoroki recounts, “Although I reckon I’ve seen you around too, Midoriya. It’s difficult to miss green hair.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you Todoroki.” Midoriya goes to bow but stops himself last minute, he might not have as much experience as the three around him, but he still held the same rank.

“I assume we’re here for a reason.” Shoji stops the introduction, folding his arms into each other and tapping his foot impatiently. “Again, I had to run _laps_ around the temple to find you, Master.”

“And I’m sorry for that, really.” Master Yaoyorozu shuts him down without raising her voice. “I suppose I should re-brief you.”

Midoriya goes to write in his book again and this time Yaoyorozu does nothing to stop him, Shoji and Todoroki giving him the same weird sideways glance before brushing it off as a consular thing.

“In less than two hours we will be sent on a shuttle to Tatooine to raid an imperial slaver camp hidden in the middle of the dunes. We’ve had eyes on this camp for nearly four months now and we have prime intelligence from the Republic military reporting that the camp’s occupants will all be moved off-world within the next week. The council has conferred with the republic and decided they’re sending us in to get the slaves back into Republic hands.” Yaoyorozu gives them a short description of the trials ahead.

“But Master,” Midoriya raises his hand, catching the attention of Yaoyorozu and more unwanted glares from Todoroki and Shoji. “Isn’t a Jedi’s job to protect and defend rather than attack and act?”

“Actually, he has a point there.” Shoji agrees with Midoriya, “Why send us in if it’s the republic’s problem? It’s not like we’re their pawns to send in as they please. On top of the fact we’re not the ones to be holding such raids in the first place.”

“You are both correct, unfortunately, this was as much the council’s decision as it was the Republics, and being a member of the council I did attempt to block it. To no avail though.” Yaoyorozu explains her position in the mission’s birth, “As Jedi, we shouldn’t ever do anything like we’re being tasked to do unless we’re told to explicitly by a higher up. Unfortunately, the entire purpose of the Jedi is to aid the republic.”

Shoji shakes his head and Midoriya finishes scribbling down whatever he was writing. “These must be some amazingly important slaves then.” Todoroki points out, “What’s the story behind them?”

“Pretty much all of them are citizens of the republic and or force sensitive. Getting them back will be a great win for our order and a kick in the gut for the Imperials.” Yaoyorozu answers.

“Just how many of them are there?” Midoriya asks.

“I’d say well over 250. Getting them all back is vital.” Yaoyorozu nods.

Shoji takes out his holo-communicator and checks the time. “2:03 am intergalactic time, 10:54 am local. What time is our shuttle again?”

“12:30 pm local, I’d say. But we can leave earlier if we wish.” Yaoyorozu checks her own holo-communicator.

“No time to waste I’d say.” Todoroki gives his opinion, “If these slaves are even _half_ as important as they’re made out to be, we should get to Tatooine as soon as we possibly can.”

“I agree.” Yaoyorozu nods, “is everyone ready to leave?”

Everyone looks at each other, expecting one will talk and break the silence. It was not the Jedi way to blindly trust, but to shun and reserve yourself was also unacceptable. The trust the four had was that of mutual respect for one another. They would fight together, yes, but after this mission, it was unlikely from Izuku’s perspective that they would talk to one another.

“I believe so,” Todoroki speaks for the party when no one objects his statement Yaoyorozu nods and begins walking towards the republic hanger with the three men close behind her. They pass by many Padawans and their Jedi masters who take the chance to discretely fawn over the high ranking party as they walk through the temple with purpose.

The first ship they take together is a Taxi to the Tython space station which was a very short distance from the republic fleet, which the ship they boarded next took them to. They soon arrive in the public arrivals hanger and walk over to the private hanger for the republic’s official business.

As they arrive they watch a ship land in the bay, not republic of origin and Shoji notes. Two figures come out of the ship, one a female with purple hair and the other a blonde male. The duo meets up with two republic troopers who salute and get briefed by their higher up.

Todoroki recognises the taller trooper with dark blue hair and glasses as the strike commander that fought with him almost five years ago at the defence of Ord Mantell. Todoroki would be lying if he said he had a bad memory, especially when it came to faces. He could recognise almost anyone who he thought had done well by their order and the regular common folk of the world they were working on.

Whilst the second party was getting briefed and, by the sound of it, arguing with each other a large shuttle lands next to the non-issue republic ship. Yaoyorozu leads the others towards it, watching maintenance workers forward out and hand Midoriya a report on the ship.

Izuku holds it awkwardly until Shoji snatches it off of him and begins reading it for himself, making sense of it and turning the pages quickly. He walks onto the ship first, head in the booklet with Todoroki and Yaoyorozu behind him. Midoriya looks on, still standing absently in the landing bay, it was only until the door to the ship began to close behind Todoroki did Midoriya’s senses come to him and he ran after the rest of his party, managing to run inside before the door clamped shut behind him.

He turns to the bridge of the ship to see Todoroki shaking his head and stifling a laugh. Todoroki walks into the front of the ship where the cockpit is, seeing Shoji already seated in the captain’s chair flicking switches and pulling levers. Yaoyorozu too is in the navigation seat, working the holo-map and plotting a course to Tatooine, preparing the ship for hyperjump.

“I don’t think we need anyone on our weapons, but if we do which one of you’s a better shot?” Shoji turns to the two men who look at each other as the subject of his question.

“I honestly don’t even know what a gun looks like.” Midoriya makes the joke at his own expense, the air left awkward after he learnt he was the only one prepared to laugh at his own joke.

“Todoroki, take the seat nearest to the bridge so you can run to the ship’s guns if need be.” Todoroki nods, knowing questioning Shoji’s methods were foolish seeing as he was the only one who could fly the ship.

Midoriya goes to ask for a role but decides against it, instead of taking a free seat in the navigation area next to Yaoyorozu who gives a warm smile.

With a little word, Shoji lifts the ship out of the hanger, flying it out of the way of all the republic cruisers, finding a secluded spot away from the republic fleet and begins to fly off into deep space, hurtling towards Tatooine.

Midoriya looks out the front window at all the surrounding stars, wondering how many they’d pass before Tatooine. He couldn’t remember how many parsecs between Tatooine and the republic fleet but he knew Shoji would have to hyperjump anyway, it’s only a question of how long they’d spend in hyperspace.

“We all ready?” Shoji checks, his fingers hovering over the hyperdrive switch. “Master?”

“The course has been plotted, we’re ready to go when you are.” Yaoyorozu gives the thumbs up.

“Okay then, if you lose your lunch, you clean it up.” He warns, flicking the switch and grabbing the controls.

Midoriya feels himself get thrown back into his chair by the sudden jolt forwards the stars around become a blurry mesh of blue swirls. “Never been into hyperspace before?” Yaoyorozu chuckles.

“Not really, I mean, I’ve never _seen it_ but I’ve been on ships that have gone through hyperspace,” Midoriya confesses, making Yaoyorozu smile at him.

“I’m pretty much constantly being deployed, I’m on ships a lot although I’ve never flown one.” Todoroki joins in the conversation to give the fact about himself.

“My parents were gunslingers, so I learnt how to fly a ship at five years old, was doing supply runs for the republic at ten.” Shoji says absentmindedly whilst concentrating on fiddling with different dials to keep them from dropping out of hyperspace.

“My parents were nobles on Alderaan, I only showed aptitude in the force at age, like, seventeen.” Midoriya shrugs.

“Really? By that age, most Jedi have faced at least two battles, and they thought you fit to join us on this mission?” Todoroki asks himself more than Midoriya who just shrugs, unsure of how to respond.

“Do you have a story. Todoroki?” Yaoyorozu asks him.

“Being council, don’t you know?” He asks her defensively.

“I do, yes. But half the party doesn’t.” She nods.

“Yeah, what’s with the mismatched hair?” Midoriya asks interested, pulling his trusty notebook and pen from his belt.

“My mother was a Jedi and my father was Sith. He tricked her into loving him and had four children with her.” Todoroki says bluntly to the bewilderment of Shoji and the messy scribbles of Midoriya. “My oldest brother, Touya became Sith, my sister and other brother weren’t force sensitive. I was trained as Sith, but found solace with the order.”

“That must’ve been very hard.” Midoriya stops writing, “having so much _power_ only to not have _control_ over it.”

“What I can’t get over is the idea a Jedi could fall to lust like that.” Shoji tuts, shaking his head.

“It was foolish on her part, I know.” Todoroki agrees with him.

As soon as they entered hyperspace they drop out of it to see the red-ish tinge of Tatooine, the stars speckling the sky completely different to the ones littering the republic fleet.

Shoji makes a call to the republic orbital station, about 150 kilometres from the planet’s surface and quickly gets landing permission. He lands the shuttle smoothly and begins the shutdown sequence. Todoroki undoes his seatbelt and goes over to the navigation area on the far left of the room to help Yaoyorozu with her’s. Midoriya huffs undoing his own, getting up and going to exit the ship. He stops when he hears Shoji mutter in a different language, likely Chiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey Buddies, thanks for reading firstly, secondly I'd like to say that all the classes and items mentioned in this story are indeed Star Wars canon albeit not in the actual movies. I play a canonical Star Wars MMORPG online and when I recently rewatched the Clone Wars I found everything was 100% canonical and that writing a crossover with this shit would be super easy.
> 
> A lot of the characters are in fact freeform, the biggest offenders to this rule being Shoji, Ojiro and Uraraka  
> I really hope you guys enjoy this really dumb story I made.
> 
> I'm also sorry in advance for the BakuIida, I know it's not popular but I got weird otps.
> 
> Lots of love,
> 
> ~Genna Bella


	2. Jedi - Chapter 2

“Is something wrong?” Yaoyorozu looks over his shoulder at the various dials trying to see something odd. 

“Yeah,” Shoji sighs. “We’re out of fuel and Tatooine prices are disgusting.”

“I thought it would’ve been fueled up before we boarded?” Yaoyorozu furrows her brows in confusion.

“With what time? We boarded meer seconds after the ship was flown to us.” Todoroki points out.

“How much money do we have?” Yaoyorozu rubs her face in defeat, “Jedi don’t usually carry material possessions.”

Looks are shared among the crew with no one offering their savings. “We could always mooch off the fleet or something, pull some strings,” Midoriya suggests.

“Jedi don’t use their status to gain the will of others, you of all people should know that, Midoriya.” Todoroki shakes his head.

“Well, we can fix the problem later. I think we have enough fuel to reach Geonosis, that’ll be less murderous when it comes to fuel prices.” Shoji theorises, flicking the last switch to shut off the ship.

“I suppose so, let’s go.” Yaoyorozu gives Shoji a few taps on the shoulder and he rises from his seat to go after her.

Shoji locks the shop door behind him and walks towards Todoroki and Midoriya who are already walking towards the elevator. They wait for Yaoyorozu and Shoji to catch up before hitting the button that takes them up to the space station bridge. They take a second elevator down and take a short walk over to the space-taxi that goes down to the planet’s surface. The trip takes less than two minutes from the time they board the commercial shuttle for it to land on the planet.

The four Jedi exit the public space hanger to see the spaceport full of aliens and humans alike. Once they're quarantined and taken out of customs they see the surrounding space full of makeshift markets and random happenings the like of which baffled Midoriya. He would've gone over to check what sorts of things the stalls sold if he and the others weren't getting dirty looks from back alley men and women who looked like just the sort to take advantage of unsuspecting tourists.

“Eyes on your wallets boys, lightsabers too.” Shoji mutters, “Master, you shouldn't walk too far away from us.”

“I can take care of myself, Shoji.” Yaoyorozu deadpans.

“We don't doubt that, Master. Still, be wary okay?” Todoroki agrees with Shoji.

Midoriya knew it wasn't Shoji's first rodeo, it was better to trust the man than have his dignity stolen. It made him wonder slightly about how he acquired his street knowledge, especially on Tatooine of all places. Midoriya of course had grown up in nobility, not knowing of the outside world until he was discovered to be force sensitive and promptly shipped off to the Jedi temple on Tython. It never occurred to him how tough many others had their childhoods. Just then, Todoroki talked about how he was raised a Sith, it made sense why he followed the Jedi code to the letter, grinding his teeth to correct someone out of line. Hell, he knew nothing about Master Yaoyorozu and her backstory and could only see Shoji's story as semi-believable.

Midoriya gets broken out of his train of thought by Yaoyorozu giving a sharp huff. “Ugh, I'm going to get so sunburnt after this.”

“Well, I guess it's good you're confident in your own body I guess.” Todoroki says awkwardly, avoiding what he actually thinks.

“We should rent speeders from the taxi, it’ll be easier that way.” Shoji suggests to the others, pointing out a flat station with a droid taking credits from people in return for speeders.

“Again, with what money?” Yaoyorozu reminds him.

“Have hope, do you have the co-ordinates of the camp, Master?” Todoroki asks her, she flashes a holomap in response, handing it to him.

“All official camps are free to travel to, right?” Todoroki asks Shoji. “In speeder fees, I mean.”

“Should be.” Shoji nods.

“So, I say we take a speeder as close as we can to the encampment, then walk the rest of the way.” Todoroki concludes.

“Where's the closest official stop then?” Midoriya asks.

Todoroki brings up Yaoyorozu's Holomap in response and walks over to the speeder platform, grabbing a digital pamphlet from the inquires station and overlapping the two. The new map showed that the closest official camp was still too far away from the their intended destination to walk. 

“Five kilometres of desert?” Yaoyorozu sighs. “I suppose we can walk that.”

“In theory, did anyone bring water?” Todoroki asks the others.

“I did! A young Jedi can never be too prepared when it comes to ratioations!” Midoriya beams, producing three full water flasks.

“So you brought water but not money?” Shoji asks in a tone that was more like he was making a statement instead.

“I- well, when you put it like that.” Midoriya coughs, throwing Todoroki and Yaoyorozu a bottle each. “Can we please get going?”

Yaoyorozu walks up to the droid without another word to her party and asks for two speeders to the outer settlement. The three men rush to join her as she gets handed the keys to two speeders, she throws one of the keys to Shoji who catches it slightly above his head. 

“We’ll meet you there I guess.” Todoroki smiles, mounting the speeder with Master Yaoyorozu clamped around his waist. Midoriya sees this and looks up to Shoji with a timid laugh. Of course it was difficult to place emotions on the man because he only ever showed one eye at a time with the way he does his hair, and has yet to take off his mask to reveal the lower side of his face, but Midoriya could just feel the annoyance radiating off of him.

“So uh, you and me?” Midoriya tucks his head into his neck with a shrug, still slightly intimidated by Shoji.

“Can you ride a speeder?”

“... no.”

“Thought so, do you wanna be in front of or behind me?”

“Behind?”

“Okay then.” Shoji walks over to the speeder corresponding with the key Yaoyorozu tossed him before disappearing with Todoroki. He hops on and starts the engine, Midoriya hopping on behind Shoji, which was something he pretty much instantly regretted thanks to the height difference between the two men.

When he felt Midoriya was safe enough Shoji kicks the bike into gear, bringing up the pre-programed guidance system to help him navigate where he was going. A few seconds in Shoji pulls his hood over his face to Midoriya’s confusion, but soon when he feels the individual grains of sand hit his barely covered legs he realises how much 100km/h sand hurts. The speeder was as smooth as a commercial speeder could potentially be, but not without a few hiccups that concerned Shoji, like broken dials and shitty glass.

Soon the two arrive at the second platform where they see Todoroki and Master Yaoyorozu laughing and joking with each other. Midoriya goes to join the two as Shoji hands the keys to the droid who bids him a nice day.

“You two took your time.” Yaoyorozu teases.

“Apologies, Master. It was my fault.” Midoriya bows, Yaoyorozu rights him.

“No, don’t worry Midoriya.” She smiles.

“Let’s start walking, we don’t have all day.” Todoroki points out, taking the first steps into the desert with Shoji close behind him.

Midoriya and Yaoyorozu lag slightly behind, watching Shoji and Todoroki argue over who was correctly reading the holomap and how the other one was wrong. Eventually Shoji reset his device to find Todoroki was right the whole time and promptly proceeded to shut up after that.

It takes only two hours in the beating sun for Shoji to see an encampment in the middle of the desert, Todoroki confirms and the four begin to be more careful in approaching the camp. The past two hours were borderline torture for Midoriya on accounts of Todoroki’s arguing with Shoji and Master Yaoyorozu’s passive complaining about the sun. For a group of Jedi, they sure weren’t rays of sunshine.

When the four were within 500 meters of the camp Shoji freezes, taking cover and pulling Todoroki with him. Scared, Midoriya dives to meet them taking Yaoyorozu with him.

“What’s up?” Midoriya asks them.

“People, can’t you see them?” Shoji points towards the encampment.

Todoroki pops his head above the sand dune to look around the seemingly empty camp. “Or lack thereof, c’mon Shoji.”

Shoji angrily shoves a pair of binoculars into Todoroki’s chest as Yaoyorozu tells him off for losing his temper again. Todoroki huffs, putting his eyes to the machine and focusing on the camp.

“I see, two speeders, one hired and one custom built.” He mutters to the others, continuing to look around. “I see four women, no wait, three women and a man with a ponytail.”

“Are they wearing imperial uniforms?” Yaoyorozu asks.

“Two of the women are; one with long, green hair (slightly darker than Midoriya’s) and one with brown, shoulder length hair. The green one is doing Kolto scans and the other is writing on a datapad-- imperial design of course.” Todoroki looks again for Yaoyorozu, swiveling to get a better look at the other half of their party. “They’re with… Bounty hunters? Yeah, bounty hunters. The man’s also doing Kolto scans and it looks like the woman is laying traps of some kind. How didn’t we notice her before? She has bright pink hair!” He adds the last bit with a pang of confusion in his voice.

“Bounty hunters and imperial agents? They must be getting desperate.” Yaoyorozu mentally notes.

“That’s good for us though, right?” Shoji points out, to which Master Yaoyorozu shrugs.

“I can take a closer look at what they’re doing if you want, Master.” Midoriya pipes up. “All I need to do is focus and I can walk right up to them!”

“That’s actually a good idea, Midoriya.” Todoroki looks towards Yaoyorozu for confirmation.

“I’d say, we have to know what they’re doing, because I dunno if you saw slaves in that camp, Todoroki.” Shoji butts in.

“I didn’t, and by the looks of things, they thought they’d find the slaves too.” Todoroki says, remembering the Kolto scans being performed by the green imperial woman and the male bounty hunter.

“They clearly just managed to get here before us.” Yaoyorozu places her dainty fingers to her chin in a stroking motion.

“They seem more prepared to find the slaves too, they likely know more than we do.” Midoriya stresses the point.

“Okay then, walk into the camp and overhear what they’re saying to one another.” Yaoyorozu decides.

“Thank you, Master. May the force be with you.” Midoriya thanks her, he places his fists together at the knuckles, standing up and taking a deep breath. Around the other three, the force seems to shift and warp, and soon Midoriya was completely invisible to the naked eye.

Completely at peace, Midoriya advances on the camp. He walks quickly for about two or three minutes, walking easily into the camp with the four imperials.

“Have you found anything yet, commander?” The brown haired woman in an imperial uniform asks the green haired woman wearing the same thing. Midoriya notices how pretty the girl really was, with rosy cheeks and enchanting, full brown eyes.

He shakes his head and takes another deep breath to center himself, making sure to not lose focus. 

“Not yet, it seems like they vanished from thin air the rate we’re going.” She sighs.

“Mister Sero, have you found anything?” The brown haired girl asks the bounty hunter performing the scans.

“Unfortunately not, Sergeant.” The man she was addressing sighs. “And please, drop the ‘Mister’, I ain’t as official as you imperial chicks. Call me Hanta if you gotta.”

“Ugh, this is useless.” The pink haired woman whines, plonking herself down on the floor and taking a swig of her water. “Listen, I don’t know why we need these slaves so bad! We can just get your boss new ones.”

“New slaves?! I can’t even begin to tell you how important they are, Miss Ashido.” The brown haired girl rouses at the pink woman.

“It’s Mina.” She scowls.

“I dunno, seems like a good idea to me.” Sero shrugs.

“Try proposing that idea to Darth Katsuki, it’s been too long since I’ve seen his apprentice throw someone out the airlock.” The green haired woman mutters just loud enough for the bounty hunters to hear whilst starting another Kolto scan.

“Darth? Oh yeah, nevermind. That’s way above my paygrade.” Mina laughs. “Commander Asui, what’re the chances the ‘pubs got here first, y’think?”

“Unlikely, they normally either leave stuff like this last minute or drastically over compensate when it comes to manpower.” The green haired girl responds. "And call me Tsu."

Midoriya shifts his position deftly when Sero nearly backs into him.

“Is there a chance any other faction got here?” Sero leans against a pile of crates Midoriya was sneaking near. “Like the Hutts, or an Alderaan piece of shit?”

Midoriya looks Sero up and down, seeing a single blaster on his right side and a heavy gauntlet on his left, over his jacket (likely Bantha hide). He looked like a genuine pyrotech, and a complete professional.

“Alderann’s unlikely, but I’d take time out of my day to harass a Hutt.” The brown haired girl shrugs, fixing her hat.

Tsu finishes her Kolto scan and walks towards Mina. “Did you lay the traps?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Mina brushes her off, rudely.

"Good, we should be able to go in that case." Tsu nods.

Midoriya looks around at the imperials, watching them all pack away their things and begin to ready themselves for departure.

All but one.


	3. Jedi - Chapter 3

As Midoriya looks at Hanta again, he watches the hunter lock eyes with him with a puzzled look. Hanta advances on Midoriya slowly, hitting various buttons on his gauntlet. Midoriya doesn't understand what he was doing until he sees the buttons flash blue then green.

A Kolto scan. On Izuku.

Midoriya takes a few deep breaths, there is no fear. He repeats to himself, Shoji said it was the path of the dark. 

Surprisingly this saves Midoriya from slipping his stealthed form. The green bean scans him head to toe, warping around Midoriya's form. He knew it would happen, Hanta clearly didn't think it'd work though as he's taken aback by the results of his scan.

He reaches for his gun and without missing a beat fires a shot into Midoriya. As quick as Hanta took the shot, Midoriya deflects it with his lightsaber, exiting stealth to reveal himself to the now terrified hunter.

Hanta turns on his tail and runs at record pace to the speeders, jumping on the custom one and getting it into gear.

"What's your deal Hant-- oh my god." Mina notices the green haired Jedi cast a spell on himself and make a circular hand motion to throw himself back into an invisible state. "Hanta what the fuck wassat?!"

"I dunno! Just get on the fucking speeder!" He yells at her, she nods and frantically does so, the two speeding north, away from Midoriya.

Tsu hits her fellow agent on the shoulder a few times causing her to panic and drop her datapad. The two women run to the remaining speeder and leave in the same direction as the bounty hunters.

Watching the spectacle from 500 meters away, Shoji throws himself backwards onto the sand with a thump and a groan. “Midoriya fucked it up, didn’t he.”

“No need for such vulgar language, Shoji. Please.” Yaoyorozu scolds him heavily.

In response he rolls his head towards her and slowly blinks, arms splayed out either side of his body.

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting? For all we know they just looked at the time and had somewhere to be.” Todoroki reaches for the binoculars again, looking through them to see Midoriya interacting with a datapad. “Ugh, nevermind. Midoriya likely messed up.” Todoroki falls back into the sand as well, lying next to Shoji in the same position.

“Boys, please. You’re both overreacting and being unnecessarily dramatic.” Master Yaoyorozu shakes her head, this time it was Todoroki that slowly turned his head to look at her, blinking slowly. He hands her the binoculars which she looks at him funnily for doing, and goes back to looking at the sky with Shoji.

“Master? Why are Todoroki and Shoji lying down on the sand? Have they finally lost it or something?” Midoriya whispers, coming out of stealth to take a seat by Master Yaoyorozu.

“Yes, is the answer to your question.” Todoroki points with a deliberately floppy arm towards Midoriya.

“Izuku, tell the truth. Do the imperials know we’re here?” Yaoyorozu folds her arms, much like a mother would asking the straightforward question.

“Uhm, yes. Yes they do. I’m sorry, Master.” Midoriya admits whilst avoiding eye contact.

“I knew he couldn’t do it.” Shoji mutters pointing into the sky, and letting the hand flop on Todoroki who doesn’t abject to it.

“Shoji, you must stop, this is not the Jedi way.” Yaoyorozu tells him off, she takes a few deep breaths to center herself. “Midoriya, what happened?”

“I dunno, I was overhearing their conversation and all of a sudden, the male bounty hunter... saw, me.” He explains, “It was so weird, one second they’re all completely oblivious and the next, he saw right through me.”

“But you were still invisible.” Todoroki confirms.

“Yes! It was so weird. He just detected me out of thin air!”

“Did he know what he was doing?” Yaoyorozu asks.

“I don’t think so, he did a Kolto scan on me and was really surprised when something turned up. He shot me and then panicked.” Midoriya explains.

“So he’s likely force sensitive, albeit not very. We could train him as a Jedi if we got the chance.” Shoji suggests.

“Oh yeah, I got this datapad too, the brown haired girl was writing on it but dropped it when I came out of stealth.” Midoriya flashes the datapad. “Todoroki mentioned they were probably also looking for the slaves, yeah he was right. By the sounds of things they had no idea where they had gone but suspect the Hutts took them.”

“That’d make sense, slimy things would kill kittens for fun.” Shoji scowls, sitting up, sand sticking to the back of his robes.

“Yeah, the pink haired girl is Mina Ashido, the man is Hanta Sero, the green woman is Commander Tsu Asui and the brown haired girl was never named but was addressed as Sergeant.” Midoriya adds, “The Commander is pretty informal and the bounty hunters don’t seem to have much loyalty to the imperials, they don’t understand anything about the cause and seem to only be hired guns. The brown haired sergeant is pretty formal though, even though she’s outranked by Tsu.”

“Did they mention who sent them? Or their employers?” Todoroki asks, “It’s not every day the imperials team up with ‘people below them’.”

“They did.” Midoriya recalls, “Mina said something about just getting new slaves and Tsu said something like, ‘propose that idea to Darth Katsuki, it’s been too long since I saw his apprentice throw someone out the airlock’.”

“Darth Katsuki?” Shoji thinks about the name.

“Never heard of him.” Todoroki shrugs.

“The name rings a bell, although I can’t place it. I remember he’s dangerous though, and I think that if he has an apprentice it’s bad news.” Yaoyorozu shakes her head.

“Where did they go when they fled? Did they say?” Todoroki asks, bringing up the map.

“They headed north and they were talking about going to see a Hutt.” Midoriya shrugs, looking at the projector being studied by Todoroki.

“Due North would send them into the wastelands, they’d die hours before civilisation.” Todoroki shakes his head.

“Or.” Shoji takes the map from Todoroki and zooms in on an off-center spot in the desert slightly west of North. “This Sarlacc hole was abandoned about one hundred years ago and was repurposed for arena fights. Buncha rich aliens gather all year round in their little fancy sky yachts and bet on the gladiators.”

“How do you know that?” Yaoyorozu asks, watching the map herself.

“Ship crashed on Tatooine when I was ten on my first solo mission, I got taken in by these gangsters who made me into a gladiator because I could telepathically throw some rocks.” Shoji says nonchalantly, giving the backstory like it was nothing. “At twelve I met Master Aizawa who took me in and trained me.”

“At twelve I was getting beaten by my father and forced to memorise the sith code.” Todoroki mutters.

Silence befalls the party with only the feint hum of the map and quiet whistling of the wind for ambient noise.

“You must be fun at parties.” Shoji coughs.

More silence.

“Uhm, this datapad has about 100 credits on it in digital currency and I found about 60 more in tangible currency.” Midoriya breaks the silence, “Enough money for two speeders for eight hours.”

“Or four for four.” Yaoyorozu corrects.

“I can’t fly a speeder, Master.” Midoriya laughs awkwardly at his own expense.

“Me neither.” She agrees.

“I can keep it from crashing, but honestly I’m rather worthless at driving those things.” Todoroki sits back on the soft sand, hugging his knees to his chest.

“Have you guys spent all your lives in temples or what?” Shoji shakes his head. “Let’s get two for eight, there’s no way we’ll be done in four hours and I don’t want Master to be sand-paste.”

“Thank you for that visual.” Midoriya shakes his head closing his eyes to dispel the mental image of Yaoyorozu crashing a speeder.

“Two more hours walking in the desert without water.” Yaoyorozu sighs, closing the gap in her robes to protect her chest from the harsh rays.

“Blame Midoriya for that, he drank most of it.” Todoroki shoots him an accusatory glare.

“It was my water.” He folds his arms.

“You drank little under half of it, you even needed a piss break.” Shoji shakes his head.

“That’s in the past, fighting with each other will not solve anything.” Yaoyorozu stands up, folding her arms. “Which way is the outpost?”

“Due west from here.” Shoji packs up the holomap, putting it in his pocket.

“The imperials are likely to be at least halfway to the arena by now, we should get going.” Todoroki pats Midoriya on the small of the back to get him moving west. Midoriya gives a feint yelp and walks quickly in that direction. He’s overtaken by Yaoyorozu with their map, walking at a moderately fast pace.

It takes seemingly less time to reach the speeder hire on the return trip, maybe because no one was talking except for the few minor corrections Todoroki told Yaoyorozu to make to their path. 

Midoriya parts with their money and they’re again given the keys to the speeders.

This time Midoriya happily hops on the back of Shoji’s speeder. Call him selfish but he would prefer to take the speeder with an experienced pilot behind the controls. Master Yaoyorozu seemed to be having a good time with Todoroki anyway, for better or worse.

Shoji leads the way even though Yaoyorozu still had the map, relying on previous knowledge and bearing to get him where he needs to go.

After a few more minutes (say 30) Midoriya pokes his head around Shoji to see and hear a pretty wild party. Complete with a sea of tarps and floating platforms, with colourful exteriors and vibrant people, confetti is being sprayed everywhere to signify a festival is happening. 

He also notices the beginnings of a hole in the ground with spikes for a roof and mesh to stop people falling in. Midoriya found himself pondering about the exact size of Sarlaccs and how long they live in these holes for.

Shoji turns the bike sideways with little warning, parking it where all the other bikes were situated and getting off expertly. He debates on offering Midoriya a hand but when the shadow falls off into the sand on his face he realises it would've been lost effort.

A few seconds later they see Todoroki and Yaoyorozu's speeder hurtling towards them, he attempts to make the same manoeuver and succeeds only barely thanks to a crossing Twi'lek couple that he nearly creams. He hops off first, taking Yaoyorozu's right hand in his left and stabilising her left arm with his right which ends with them in a lover's position.

"I'm pretty sure that isn't allowed." Midoriya coughs to himself, unsure of whether Shoji heard or not until he sighs and nods. 

Thankfully the two Jedi realise what they're doing and break awkwardly fast enough for the other two to pretend they saw nothing.

"Which one of these-- 32-- platforms have the imperials gone to, you think?" Todoroki does a slow 360° to get a good look at the colourful tarps, dancing and singing people, bright confetti and gaping Sarlacc hole.

"The one with a hutt." Midoriya says through his teeth looking for any clan flag belonging to a hutt house.

"There are so many people here." Yaoyorozu says in awe. "How many of them are doing illicit acts, I wonder?"

"Why, you jealous Master?" Shoji teases although it isn't taken lightly by Yaoyorozu who gives him a glare, promptly stopping his laughter.

“No, this place is just so unsavoury for good Jedi and republic citizens to be.” Yaoyorozu explains. “It makes me remember how awful slavery is.”

“You were a slave?” Midoriya asks Yaoyorozu, eyes wide with the sudden revelation.

“Not me personally, but my sister and her young family.” Yaoyorozu elaborates, calming Midoriya. “I don’t feel comfortable talking about it in such an open place, perhaps when we’re back on the ship.” 

Midoriya breaks the conversation when he looks over his Master’s shoulder to see out the window of one of the yachts a girl with light brown hair, large brown eyes and rosy cheeks. “The Imperial sergeant, over in that yacht.” He points to the tarp house decorated in reds and yellows second to their right about 100 or so meters away.

“That’s likely where our Hutt is too.” Todoroki points out.

He starts to walk closer to the red and yellow tarp house with the other three close behind him. They pass all manner of dancers and entertainers and Todoroki feels a sudden urge to keep their Master closer to him.

They walk around the side of the tarps to walk up the uninviting ramp lined with fallen confetti and smelling of the strongest spirits in the galaxy.

As they ascend the ramp, Midoriya has to duck so he’s not hit by an empty flying bottle that comes out of the dark, unlit hole with cheering and laughing able to be heard over the music.

They reach the top to see one hell of a party, people drinking like there was no tomorrow and dancing moves to match. At this point in time Todoroki’s arm is around Yaoyorozu’s waist, and she was smart enough to know rejecting it would be a bad idea.

Instead of a Hutt sitting on the throne surrounded by women, they see a lone Tusken Raider surrounded by dancers, food and drink. Including the Imperial Sergeant from before wearing a beautiful red dress and handing out wine from a silver platter being held in her left hand. She locks eyes with Midoriya and says something into her communicator situated on her right arm, holding it up to her mouth and turning her back on the four guests.

Midoriya nudges Yaoyorozu lightly to get her attention, “red dress.” He mutters into her ear, she says nothing in response and instead nods.

“Four strangers enter my sky palace, a temple that the Jedi envy, how are you lovely people doing today?” The raider gives a hearty smile, his voice hoarse from an abundance of alcohol and tobacco. “Especially you, young lady. Maybe I can work out a deal with your boy toy to see how long you’d like to stay here.”

Yaoyorozu tries to hide her disgust and contempt for the man but fails slightly, letting on the message.

“Funny you mention four strangers, that’s exactly the amount of people we’re looking for right about now.” Shoji folds his arms, letting him know exactly what they’re there for. “They have knowledge of our slaves, slaves that’ve been stolen from us.”

“Sorry buddy, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He swivels in his seat, placing one leg over the other in a display of laidback smugness.

“Do you not know or have we just not offered enough credits yet?” Todoroki suggests.

“You’re sharp, but still stupid and shit if you think I’d willingly give that information to Jedi.” He snaps, causing Shoji to shift his weight from one foot to the other and Todoroki’s lips to curve into a frown. “Yeah, you three might not be carrying lightsabers but the green one definitely is. Even if he wasn’t, you didn’t think to change clothes or not bring along the man who murdered my brother?”

He was right, back at the spaceport Shoji had told the others to hide their sabers, but since Midoriya used his when he was shot at by the bounty hunter, he hadn’t bothered to put it away so now the weapon was idly hanging at his belt, alerting the others of the group’s status.

They hadn’t had enough money for new clothes and stealing them wouldn’t have been the Jedi way, they were really just praying the lack of lightsabers would hide them on a world of a vast gap between the upper class and lower class.

But the last bit? Who was he talking about when he said the man who murdered his brother? Midoriya for one had never even set foot on Tatooine let alone killed anyone on the baron planet. Yaoyorozu was too pure but Shoji, hell Shoji grew up on this planet. As a gladiator he would’ve had many chances to kill this guy’s brother. 

However, all doubt was dispelled as soon at the raider opened his mouth again.

“You.” He points to Todoroki, “The two-toned fucker in the heavy armour. You turned up to Tatooine about ten years ago with your big ol’ papa and speared my bro through the heart.”

“I regret my past, I have gallons of blood on my hands and all I want to do is wash them. I was twelve years old ten years ago, I’m a different man, and a Jedi now.” Todoroki admits, stepping forward into the light shining down from the slit in the tarps.

“Y’know, I’m feeling generous today. It’s a party after all.” The raider’s face twists into an evil grin as the others see puzzle pieces click together in his brain. “Currently, my gladiator is feeling a little under the weather (being dead does that to ya y’see). So I’m in the market for a new one.”

“You want me?” Todoroki asks.

“Yeah, precisely.” He rights himself, leaning forward in the throne to meet Todoroki’s level. “If you win for me: I get the jackpot, and you get your slaves.”

“I agree to your terms, I’ll become your gladiator.” Todoroki nods, bending down on one knee and placing a fist to the floor in an act of humility.

“No! Wait a minute, you can’t decide that for us.” Yaoyorozu speaks up, pointing angrily at the raider. “I agree with the terms, but we should be the ones deciding who fights.”

“Master, it’s fine. I was the man who killed his brother after all, the bonds between family aren’t meant to be broken.” Todoroki insists.

“Yes, but if you go through this you’ll only end up killing more people! Do you really wanna wash your bloody hands with more blood?” Midoriya yells at him concerned.

Todoroki seems to sadden after Midoriya says this, knowing he was right. Todoroki honestly hadn’t thought about that. Making the river run red was not the Jedi way, and not the way Todoroki could secure himself in his own conscious.

“Let me take his place.” Shoji grabs Todoroki’s arm and gently throws him behind towards Midoriya and Yaoyorozu. “I’m Mezo Shoji, a Sentinel and one of the republic’s finest. You want a Jedi that’ll win for ya? I’m your guy. I’ll make the sand down there red.”

Shoji ascends the steps to the throne and leers over the raider, slamming his hand behind the man aggressively. “You have my word.”

To Midoriya, the scariest bit was the way Shoji said those lines. Like he really meant it. It was really no secret he was scared of Shoji, terrified even when the stars aligned. 

The fact he promised the death of his foes deeply concerned Midoriya. On one hand he could be lying and spare his opponents, but that’d be breaking his word and the word of a Jedi should never be broken. On the other, he could be telling the truth, it would still be killing people, even in combat.

“Shoji, no.” Yaoyorozu takes his arm. “Think about this, would you?”

“I have, Master.” He scowls, looking down on her. She checks his face for any sort of contradiction to his words, any emotion be it fear or reassurance in the one eye visible to her, but finding nothing instead.

“Y’all got some drama you need to work out, please, do it outside.” The raider brushes them away and at the same time signals for the woman in the red dress to get him a drink.

Yaoyorozu grabs Shoji and Todoroki in each hand and pulls them out of the room, Todoroki follows behind her soundly but Shoji stumbles to keep up with her on account of his height and stride length. She stops walking to turn around. “Midoriya, don’t just stand there.” she hisses.

“Master, let me stay for a bit, please.” He insists.

Yaoyorozu frowns as she makes the decision, “Fine, but don’t forget the code.”

As she walks out she calls back to Midoriya, “and don’t look at the boobs, they’ll corrupt you.”

Midoriya awkwardly laughs at Yaoyorozu’s statement, looking back to the raider and his followers.

“You don’t have to do as she says, Midoriya. That bitch may be hot but she still has no right meddling in the affairs of us men.” The raider laughs once Yaoyorozu was out of earshot. “Why don’t you give our Jedi pal a drink, babe?” 

Midoriya has a hard think about whether or not to give the man a piece of his mind after hearing him call his master such deplorable names, but ruining the already fragile standing between the two parties was a dumb idea.

The sergeant shows no emotion to having her ass tapped by the raider as she moves towards Midoriya. “I know why you stayed, I’ll talk to you later.” She whispers, offering him a drink which he decides to take out of kindness.

“Why not now? Surely you’re allowed to mingle with the guests.” He tries to convince her.

“Maybe I am, I don’t have business with you. Sharing information with the enemy is idiotic, especially when we’re looking for the same thing.” She walks back to her post when Midoriya grabs her free arm.

“You know my name now, it’s only fair I know yours too.” He whispers, seeing her internally debate telling him.

“Sergeant Ochaco Uraraka.” She answers in an equally hushed tone.

He smiles, going back to his drink (which of course he doesn’t even wet his lips with) and enjoying the party as much as possible, wishing he could focus enough to return to stealth and disappear entirely.

\--

“What was that, Shoji?” Todoroki asks him in a very accusatory tone as Yaoyorozu throws him with a slight force away from her making him stumble onto the sand.

“I’m saving your ass, Todoroki! Show a little gratitude.” He straightens himself out.

“Saving me, pssh. This is my cross to bear Shoji! You can’t change that.” Todoroki argues back, rising to tip toes in order to meet Shoji’s gaze.

“Yours huh? Since we met you’ve been going on and on about your shit childhood and how you don’t wanna be sith like your dad. Well since you think you got a higher likelihood of beating this test, how about we go right now?!” Shoji begins to raise his voice, grabbing for the pouch on the left side of his belt and pulling one of his lightsabers. The familiar sound of it activating stills the air, a long green beam of light energy faces the party, humming softly.

“Shoji! How dare you?!” Yaoyorozu gives a shrill yell, using the force to push the button on his saber again and pull it towards her. “Did Master Aizawa not teach you the basics of a Jedi as a Padawan? Did he not fix your obvious pride problem? To pull a lightsaber on a member of your own order? I am astounded you haven’t fallen to the dark side yet. Such zeal is unbecoming of a Jedi, I should exile you where you stand!”

Shoji takes off his hood to run a hand through his hair, ruining the deliberate angle it was set at by pulling it back and letting it fall messily over the left side of his face, revealing both of his eyes. He uses the force to get his lightsaber back from Yaoyorozu, gripping it tightly. “Dammit, I’m sorry Todoroki. Master Yaoyorozu’s right. I was just trying to help, I’m an idiot.”

“I understand Shoji, but I’m not sure I want to accept your apology.” Todoroki sighs, fiddling with the sand under his boots and taking deep breaths. “By Master’s outburst I can assume all of us are harbouring quite a bit of resentment, which is not the Jedi way.”

Shoji takes a few deep breaths and places his lightsaber on his belt, folding one arm across his torso and playing with his hair with the other. “I know offering myself as a gladiator was selfish, if I die how would you guys get home with no money?” 

“Honestly, we would use Midoriya’s idea of mooching off the republic.” Todoroki laughs, “But you’re right, I’ve fought so hard to be the Jedi my mother couldn’t be and to reject my Sith teachings. It’d be a shame to throw that away for some crummy tournament. If I’m completely honest, I’m honoured to be worthy of your sacrifice.”

“It’s the Jedi way, Todoroki.” Shoji shrugs, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I’m still sorry, y’know.”

“I get that.” He sighs, “Thanks.”

“Boys.” Yaoyorozu mutters under her breath shaking her head with a look of disbelief on her face. “Talk about a 180.”

“We should go rescue Midoriya from the hell hole.” Todoroki laughs, walking back up the ramp.

As they re enter the area, they see Midoriya looking like a total fish out of water. His face lights up when he's met with his three companions, expressing his gratitude with a relieved sigh.

"I hope you lovely ladies have made a damned decision." The raider snarls, adopting his previous lounging position.

"We did indeed." Yaoyorozu folds her arms allowing Shoji to step forwards.

"My name is Mezo Shoji and I'll be your gladiator."


	4. Imperials - Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
> 
> Commander Tsuyu Asui is expected to bring renown to the imperials!
> 
> With her bubbly, bouncy, Sniper protege and two hot headed bounty hunters that are definitely only in it for the money.
> 
> Will she be able to deliver on Darth Katsuki’s wishes?
> 
> Or will the mismatched groupings be too much for her?

A lone green haired woman walks down the ship's bridge to the imperial hanger past a whole assortion of officers with a clipboard in one hand and pen in the other, taking notes on the ins and outs of the ship’s workings.

This was hardly her favourite job but it was better than being killed, or worse fired. Especially when she worked on the ship of the infamous Darth Katsuki Bakugou, that guy could destroy 20 odd years of life in so many ways depending on which button he felt like pressing that day.

She hears hurried footsteps behind her and soon after has an arm wrapped around her shoulder, hugging her tightly.

"Commander Asui! Just who I was looking for." A familiar Admiral Yamada beams, long blonde hair the first thing Asui sees before he stops her to enter her full field of view. “How would you like a special mission?”

“Do I have a choice?” Asui croaks, flipping through previous notes to see how far along she was with her current job to find the answer was: not very.

“Honesetly, no. The order’s coming from Darth Katsuki himself.” Admiral Yamada sighs, producing a datapad from some other worldly pocket in his uniform which Asui takes hesitantly.

Asui reads the contents and looks up to Yamada with a look on her face that screams confusion. “A report on the slaves situated on Tatooine to be moved to Korriban within the week? A sergeant that needs training completed and two bounty hunters for support.” She reads out the brief.

“That’s it. They’re probably real important if the big boss is after them.” Yamada theorises. “Anyway, the Sergeant is in the hanger and you’ll meet the bounty hunters on Tatooine.”

“Thank you, sir.” She nods, saluting and resuming her walk to the hanger, only this time with an ulterior mission to maintenance

“Just doing my job.” Yamada shrugs in her wake.

It doesn’t take long for Asui to reach the hanger and find the young Sergeant she was tasked with training, her light brown bob turns with her head as she spots the Commander.

“Commander Tsuyu Asui! How are you?” The girl runs towards her, her elbows jiggling with wide eyed enthusiasm.

“Please, call me Tsu.” Asui cocks her head to the side, “I don’t like formalities.”

“Oh, well, Comman-... Tsu, it’s nice to finally get to meet the imperial’s finest! I heard that out of all operatives in your age group you have the highest kill count and mission success rate, and by a clear margin too!” The brown haired girl bobs up and down, muttering various statements about Tsu which seemed to have at least some significance to her. “I’m Sergeant Ochaco Uraraka, I’m a sniper for the imperial’s 6th battalion.”

Uraraka extends her hand with Tsu takes, giving it a warm and firm shake.

“Where’re we going first? There’s the prison camp on Belsavus, we can help the executioners with taking out those on death row! Let ‘em run around a bit before popping them!” Uraraka’s eyes find a spark of dark determination as she explains how one would go about her training.

“Actually, we’re off to Tatooine. The higher-ups have been assessing your performance and have concluded that, whilst amazing in an offensive position, you become a hindrance to your team whilst filling a support role.” Tsu informs her, placing her hands behind her back and pacing a bit to convey the seriousness of her words.

 

“But why would I ever need to fill support when I rack up numbers that I do? That’s so dumb!” Uraraka huffs, crossing her arms and looking over to the various departing flights.

“You need to be adept at all fields if you want to move up at all, Ochaco.” Tsu points out, “We’re going to Tatooine and giving a report on some slaves belonging to Darth Katsuki that need to be moved off world to Korriban, it is vital we secure them before the republic gets off their asses and does something about it.”

“The republic knows of this camp?” 

“Yes, they do. But being the republic and all, they’re waiting until exactly the right moment to do something about it. If I had to guess, they’re talking to the Jedi council about sending in some of their order to do the work they ‘don’t have enough manpower to complete’.”

“The republic has always had a history of dodging responsibility, I suppose it makes our job easier.”

“I wouldn’t count on it, honestly. With the amount of sway the republic has with the council, we may very well be dealing with Jedi.” Tsu shakes her head.

“Is it just us two? How many slaves are there? If they were that important surely we’d have more than just us, right?”

“We’re giving a report on the state of the slaves and if they’re stable enough to be moved. As far as I know, we will have no part in the actual moving of the slaves.”

“Oh, but we’ll still need some muscle if we’re aren’t going to be safe, the republic resistance on Tatooine is pretty significant after all.” 

“You’re right, that’s why we’re going to be introduced to two bounty hunters on Tatooine that’ll help us navigate and wise us up on the street rules.”

“Bounty hunters?” Uraraka’s face twists into a slight disgust, why bounty hunters of all people? Couldn’t they just send along some other sergeant with a misspent youth or something? Why hire bounty hunters? Those fools would change sides at the drop of a hat if it meant more money for them, how did Darth Katsuki think this was in anyway a good idea?

“Yes, bounty hunters. They’re waiting on Tatooine for us, likely as we speak.” Tsu nods, a man in a maintenance uniform coming up to her and handing her a spreadsheet with the corresponding ship number. She takes it and thanks him, looking it over swiftly and silently.

“Alright then, I have my stuff.” Uraraka lifts a standard issue duffel bag over her left shoulder. “Money, food, water and of course my gun.”

“It says on the sheet my things have already been gathered and placed in the cargo hold of our ship, they added a standard commander’s operative kit to make up for what they couldn’t find in my quarters, that’s creepy.” Tsu awkwardly laughs, walking towards the ship with purpose.

She opens the door to the ship and looks around, walking to the cargo bay first and grabbing the duffel bag, looking inside to see the imperials had stayed true to their word and given her all her equipment and more.

Tsu takes the bag and walks to the front of the ship where she sees Uraraka strapping herself in to the navigation area, pulling up the map and setting a course for Tatooine.

Tsu sits herself down in the captain’s chair, beginning the start up sequence by flicking various knobs and switches. The loud humming of the engines starting up alerting her to the fact her method was successful.

Tsu gently lifts the ship off the ground, pulling in the landing gear and slowly lifting out of the hanger, into the wide emptiness of space.

“You’re ready to hyperjump?” Uraraka asks Tsu, using the incorrect terminology seemingly unknowingly.

“Sure thing.” Tsu smiles, looking over to her companion who flips some switches of her own.

The two women feel their heads gently thrown to the backs of their chairs, as the stars around them begin to blur and become saturated with a bright blue-white mesh.

“Do all operatives learn how to fly a ship, or is it just you?” Uraraka asks Tsu.

“Well, an operative is taught a lot of things, they want to make us jacks of all trades, y’know?” Tsu explains, “You just never learnt these skills because you were too busy shooting birds on Coruscant from half a kilometer in the eye whilst evading capture by the republic who didn’t want you there.”

“Pshh,” Uraraka skips a beat, “It was on Alderaan, there aren’t any birds on Coruscant.”

Tsu goes to look her in the eyes so she can see her puzzled expression when they come out of hyperspace, suddenly being faced with the bright red planet of Tatooine.

Tsu calls into the space station who give them a private landing bay almost immediately, not too many people wanting to visit the planet renowned for its organised crime it would seem.

They land smoothly and grab all the gear they needed, food, water, money and weaponry all in the very handy duffel bags provided to them.

The two grab the first taxi down to the surface, only it was public meaning Uraraka had to sit next to a very sweaty Trandosian double her size for a whole of two minutes.

When they land and get off at customs, making sure to get immunised and cleared medically they exit the terminal to see a line of various aliens and humans, holding signs with the names of loved ones on them. 

The sign that stood out to the two however was the one written in chunky red ink on a heavily corroded piece of cardboard that read, ‘Mina & Hanta’. Holding it are a man and a woman both wearing gear that looks like it was from Tatooine. 

The man looks like he was only able to shave once a week and the woman looked like she didn’t know what a razor was. The man had longer hair than the woman that was a natural black and tied back into a low hanging ponytail, the messy straggling hair falling over a pair of goggles resting on his forehead. The girl on the other hand had bright pink dyed hair in a messy pixie cut, one notable thing about her was that the whites of her eyes were black due to what appeared to be a permanent augment.

As soon as the two spot Tsu and Uraraka they wave and jeer to get their attention, which works in attracting Tsu to their position. “Y’know, normally they put the names of the arrivals on the sign.”

“Really?” The girl takes the sign off her partner, turning it around to face her.

“Also, that is red ink right?” Uraraka points out.

“Nah, that’s ‘hundred percent the family of desert rats we creamed on the way here.” The man gives an unempathic giggle.

“Explains the smell.” Uraraka says in disgust through gritted teeth.

“You guys are Sergeant Ochaco Uraraka and Commander Tsuyu Asui, right? Or we have the wrong imperial agents that look exactly like how Sergeant Ochaco Uraraka and Commander Tsuyu Asui were described to us.” The girl asks the imperials who give her a look of disbelief.

Tsu had always prided herself on being able to pick how someone was feeling and thinking, and right now she was almost certain Uraraka was thinking something along the lines of, ‘So we’re working with psycho idiots who have likely had a threesome with a rancor before, just brilliant.’

“I’m Commander Asui and beside me is Sergeant Uraraka, but please call me Tsu. Which one’s Mina Ashido and which one’s Hanta Sero?” Tsu introduces her and Uraraka to the unlikely accomplices.

“I’m Mina, Hanta’s the idiot.” The pink haired girl points to him with a giant smile plastered across her face when he gives a sound ‘huh’ to indicate he wasn’t listening.

“She called you an idiot.” Uraraka deadpans.

“Oh, yeah no. I ain’t an idiot, just a little slow some times. Mina thinks she’s smarter ‘coz she likes laying booby traps and explosives and stuff. I’m a pyrotech so, more like burning people alive or whatever.” Hanta looks off the the side whilst scratching the underside of his chin.

“Okay, are either of you force sensitive?” Tsu asks the two who look at her funny for a second.

“W-wassat?” Hanta leans over a few degrees to whisper into Mina’s ear.

“It means if you’re sensitive in the force, dummy!” Mina whisper shouts back.

“Oh, sorry.” He straightens up, content with the answer.

Uraraka and Tsu stare at them both for a few seconds in sheer awe.

“You’re joking, right?” Uraraka sighs, completely done with them after only a few minutes.

“I think we can assume the answer is ‘no’, Ochaco.” Tsu answers for the pair.

Mina eyes the bags and nearly goes over the railings in excitement. “What’s in the bag? Weapons? Tech? Rations? Holy crap I bet I haven’t seen half the stuff that’s in that bag in years.”

“Just imperial basics, kits and that.” Tsu explains, “although I’d prefer not having to explain three vibroknives and a light assault rifle to security so can you please keep it down?”

“Oh yeah, sorry about that.” Mina laughs as she continues to play on the railing. “So what’s the mark?”

 

“The imperials have a remote slaver camp in the middle of Tatooine’s desert, our job is to deliver a report to our superiors on whether or not the slaves will be okay to move.” Uraraka briefs.

“So why’d ya need us?” Hanta asks, “Thought you imp’s had a purity complex or summin’.”

“Technically we do, but we needed people with an inside knowledge of this planet to take us through it.” Tsu admits, placing her finger to her chin and tilting her head.

“We also think we’re fighting the republic for time, they’ve known of our operation for months now but are seemingly keeping their noses out of our business.” Uraraka adds, although she only knows what Tsu has told her about the mission herself.

“The ‘pubs probably ain’t gonna be an issue unless they decide to gargle Jedi balls.” Mina makes note. “If that does happen, we’re all dead.”

“Thanks for that mental image.” Uraraka frowns.

“She’s right though, didn’t I tell you about this before? If the republic decides to send Jedi after us, we lose the fight instantly.” Tsu agrees with Mina.

“If you’re worried about Jedi, we should get going. They aren’t known for dawdling.” Hanta tosses the sign on the floor and walks away from the bar separating the two parties.

Tsu and Uraraka walk through the designated walkway to meet him at the mouth of the one way lane.

“Mina n’ I only took the one speeder t’ save money, but there’s a hire platform outside the airport where we can get one for you two.” Hanta points to the droid giving speeders for hire outside the airport. “You got money?”

“Among other things, even if we didn’t we could wave the ol’ badge.” Uraraka shrugs.

“Well, let’s go. If they send Jedi we better be one step ahead.” Hanta takes her hand and leads her through the airport, various stalls being operated by aliens selling useless, overpriced junk. Back-alley characters eye up Tsu and Mina more than Uraraka, but Mina shoots them glares that make them disregard them as targets.

Soon they reach the droid who makes the operatives part with 80 tangible credits in exchange for a two-seater speeder.

“We parked a little ways away, can you wait for us here whilst we grab our speeder or should we meet you somewhere?” Mina informs them, beginning to walk away in the direction of their speeder.

“We’ll wait here for you.” Tsu answers, looking to Uraraka for confirmation and getting a nod in response.

“I might actually stay with them, two foreign women alone with no man around is begging for trouble.” Hanta tells Mina who brushes him off and walks away to where their speeder was parked.

Hanta, Uraraka and Tsu wait for Mina on the speeder hire platform. They stand in wait for a few minutes idly, watching the people walk past them going on with their daily lives.

“We didn’t park that far away.” Hanta mutters under his breath, Tsu hears however and gets concerned . 

A few more minutes pass and collective anxiety rises among the three, although it wasn’t until Tsu sits down and Hanta loses it. “Dammit! We shoulda gone together, she’s probably had something happen to her.”

“Calm down, we can go look for her.” Uraraka snaps, unsympathetic to the bounty hunters.

“Get your damn speeder, we need to get her.” Hanta snaps back, walking the direction Mina left from.

Uraraka puts the keys in the machine and starts the engine, leading the bike into the open with her hands on the handle bars. “What do you think happened to her?”

“I dunno, but if she’s been injured, those fuckers won’t live to see the sun rise tomorrow.” Hanta snarls, “not that the sun ever sets on Tatooine, but uh, y’know. I’ll kill ‘em.”

“Fair enough, want me to prepare my gun? Or do you have this?” Tsu asks, reaching for her duffelbag.

“I can’t ride a speeder, so I’ll use my gun.” Uraraka says, passing the speeder handles to Tsu who takes it after zipping up her bag.

Uraraka takes out her rifle from her bag, looking down the scope and taking the safety off. She picks up a little ball from her bag and inserts it into her ear, hitting the little blue button that makes it unfurl into a virtual targeting system.

“That looks like cheating.” Hanta pouts.

“I can hit things without it, Mister Sero.” She smirks, fastening a silencer to the tip of her muzzle and bringing it up to her eye, testing her guidance system and form. Through her scope, about a kilometer away she sees familiar pink hair on a custom speeder. “Wow, just wow.” She shakes her head in disbelief, flicking on the safety again and pressing the blue button that turns off the aiming aid.

“What is it?” Tsu asks her, practically hugging the speeder.

“It seems Miss Ashido doesn’t need rescuing.” Uraraka rests her bag on her knee, placing her gun back carefully but keeping the piece of technology in her ear.

No sooner does she pack up does Mina come into view, decelerating the speeder rapidly and violently so it kicks up sand in Hanta’s face. An act which he does not care for.

“You scared the shit outta me woman! What the fuck was you doing? Jacking off some alien? What the fuck?!” He yells at her, drawing the attention of some passer-bys.

“Holy shit, chill.” Mina dismounts the vehicle, running a hand through her hair.

“What were you doing?” Tsu asks her, “We were starting to worry.”

“I couldn’t get it to start! I had to pop the hood and try my luck that way.” Mina explains herself.

“You popped the hood of my speeder? Because it wouldn’t start?!” Hanta yells at her, waving his twig-like arms up and down like a wind up toy. “You know that you just gotta kick the clutch into 3rd then reverse to get it started! That’s why I never park it reverse!”

“Well that bit must’a slipped my mind!” Mina yells back, only less animated.

“You could’ve called Hanta, right?” Tsu protests, looking at the communicator on Hanta’s right arm that was flashing a sound and steady green.

“I didn’t think it would take as long as it did!” Mina defends herself unnecessarily.

“Well, if we’ve all finished wasting time, we should get going.” Uraraka pulls her right elbow over her head and pulls on it with her left hand, then repeating with switched arms.

“Agreed.” Hanta snatches the keys off Mina and gets on the speeder, she huffs in involuntary compliance getting on behind him and wrapping her right arm around his waist.

Tsu gets on the speeder she hired with their bags hanging off hooks either side of the bike. Uraraka hops on behind her, careful not to kick the bags.

“Follow our lead.” Tsu instructs the two, speeding away due north with the two bounty hunters closely behind.


	5. Imperials - Chapter 2

They travel for about an hour before reaching the camp, Tsu’s face turns to confusion when she sees nothing but a deserted camp. There should be 250 slaves here and about half as many guards stationed, but now there’s just dust. This isn’t good, if Darth Katsuki finds out the slaves and the guards are lost Tsu and Uraraka can kiss their 22 years of life goodbye.

Tsu slides the speeder, stopping it quickly. She turns the key and the speeder drops to the ground. Uraraka grabs a datapad out of her bag and starts typing away at it in an imperial lexicon.

“I thought there were meant to be slaves here?” Uraraka asks Tsu puzzled, Tsu shakes her head, letting Uraraka know she had as much idea about any of this as anyone else.

Mina and Hanta appear about thirty seconds later. Mina gets off her partner’s speeder, and takes a quick look around the camp. “I thought there were meant to be slaves here?” She mutters to the other two, unknowingly repeating Uraraka’s statement.

“So did we.” Tsu mutters in reply, she reaches into her bag, pulling a small device and begins scanning the area, looking for any signs of their lost slaves.

“I don’t understand how slaves can just, disappear.” Hanta pushes a few buttons on his own gauntlet, activating his own Kolto scan function and aiding Tsu.

“Neither do I, I don’t even know where they could be.” Tsu admits, moving to a stack of tarps for her next Kolto scan.

“I might have an idea, but trust me, we wanna go there as a last resort.” Mina says, surveying the flat landscape around them.

Hanta’s lips curve into a thin frown as he gets an idea of where Mina was talking about whilst doing another Kolto scan.

“Ashido, you can lay traps can’t you?” Uraraka recalls their first meeting where Hanta said something about Mina’s trapping ability.

“Pro’lly the best trapper on the whole of Tatooine.” Mina huffs proudly.

“Well maybe use those skills instead of being dead weight?” Uraraka says, her tone making the request more of a command than anything else.

Mina makes mocking head motions whilst muttering things in an overly high-pitched and whiny voice, getting to work on the requested traps, laying down low explosive rounds and hooking them up to convenient wires found by Tsu.

“What’re the chances of a rebellion y’think?” Hanta suggests to the others, finishing a scan and moving on to another.

“Pretty low in my opinion.” Tsu answers him, “250 slaves again 100 armed guards, and even if they overpowered the guards, however unlikely that is, where are the bodies?”

“You’re right, I think either the republic got here or the Jin’gwan house.” Hanta throws more ideas on the table.

“Jin’gwan, aren’t they the Tuskan raiders that keep slaves? They have a presence here?” Uraraka asks.

“Seriously? Do Tuskan raiders have a presence on Tatooine?” Mina laughs at the stupid question.

“Have you found anything yet, commander?” Uraraka changes the subject violently, annoyed with Mina’s condescending attitude.

“Not yet, it seems like they vanished from thin air the rate we’re going.” Tsu turns at the title, sighing.

“Mister Sero, have you found anything?” Uraraka turns her attention to Hanta who gives her a weird glare.

“Unfortunately not, Sergeant.” He addresses her equally as formal as a light joke. “And please, drop the ‘Mister’, I ain’t as official as you imperial chicks. Call me Hanta if you gotta.”

Hanta shakes his head giving a small scoff and deducing that Uraraka must always be like this when she’s embarrassed.

“Ugh, this is useless.” Mina whines, plonking herself down on the floor and taking a swig of her water. “Listen, I don’t know why we need these slaves so bad! We can just get your boss new ones.”

“New slaves?! I can’t even begin to tell you how important they are, Miss Ashido.” Uraraka basically yells at her in a ‘have you not listened to a single word we’ve said’ sort of way.

“It’s Mina.” She scowls.

“I dunno, seems like a good idea to me.” Hanta shrugs.

“Try proposing that idea to Darth Katsuki, it’s been too long since I’ve seen his apprentice throw someone out the airlock.” Tsu mutters just loud enough for the bounty hunters to hear whilst starting another Kolto scan.

“Darth? Oh yeah, nevermind. That’s way above my paygrade.” Mina laughs. “Commander Asui, what’re the chances the ‘pubs got here first, y’think?”

Tsu gives her a slight glare which Mina returns with a smug smile.

“Unlikely, like I said, they normally either leave stuff like this last minute or drastically over compensate when it comes to manpower.” Tsu responds. "And call me Tsu."

Hanta feels something behind him as he backs into a pile of crates but thinks nothing of it.

“Is there a chance any other faction got here?” He asks again, almost like he forgot the first answer he was given. “Like the Hutts, or an Alderaan piece of shit?”

“Alderann’s unlikely, but I’d take time out of my day to harass a Hutt.” Uraraka fixes her hat, brushing her ear to make sure her piece hadn’t fallen out (which it hadn’t).

Tsu finishes her Kolto scan and walks towards Mina. “Did you lay the traps?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Mina brushes her off, rudely.

"Good, we should be able to go in that case." Tsu nods.

With Tsu’s lead, Mina begins to pack up her unspent terrorist equipment and pack it into the bag on the her side of the speeder. Uraraka begins to add the finishing touches to her report as Hanta loiters around the crates.

Until he spots something.

Or at least, he thought he did. Over by the tarp formation, he thought he saw something, a glint in the corner of his eye. Hanta advances on the suspicious tarp formation slowly, hitting various buttons on his gauntlet to enact another Kolto scan, wouldn’t hurt, right?

The green bean scans the area head to toe, warping around a humanoid form. Hanta’s expression becomes that of pure fear, because of the fact he didn't think it'd work, he's taken aback by the results of his scan.

He reaches for his gun and without missing a beat fires a shot into the warped area. As quick as Hanta took the shot, a Jedi deflects it with his lightsaber, exiting stealth to reveal himself to the now terrified hunter.

The Jedi had green hair ( a lighter shade than Tsu’s) and equally green eyes. His double-edged lightsaber was also a light green leading Hanta to pick up on a distinct theme. He wore a seemingly vanilla sage uniform, the robes not looking customised in any way.

Hanta turns on his tail and runs at record pace to the speeders, jumping on his and getting it into gear (reverse gear of course), much to the surprise of Mina.

"What's your deal Hant-- oh my god." Mina notices the green haired Jedi cast a spell on himself and make a circular hand motion to throw himself back into an invisible state. "Hanta what the fuck wassat?!"

"I dunno! Just get on the fucking speeder!" He yells at her, she nods and frantically does so, the two speeding north, away from the camp and the Jedi, and subsequently, away from Tsu and Uraraka.

Uraraka is completely oblivious to the presence of the intruding Jedi until Tsu hits her on the shoulder a few times causing her to panic and drop her datapad. Tsu is the first to reach the speeder with Uraraka close behind. Uraraka locks eyes with the Jedi and jumps on the back of Tsu’s speeder with maximum urgency. 

Tsu speeds off after Hanta and Mina with Uraraka checking behind them every three seconds to see if they were being followed, which they thankfully weren’t.

It takes an hour before they see anything resembling civilisation in the distance, the two see great towers of tarps and colourful explosions all around, cheering and jeering everywhere with women dressed scantily and men draped in riches. 

“What’re the chances Hanta and Mina lead us here?” Uraraka asks in awe of the sheer scale she’s faced with.

“Very high.” Tsu replies, speeding towards the tarp city.

Tsu gradually slows the bike down when she sees what looks like a platform for speeder parking.

“I’m honestly happy you decided to trust us.” Mina hugs herself without looking Tsu and Uraraka in the eyes.

“Where are we?” Tsu asks her.

“Every year, 32 prominent families from all around the galaxy gather around this abandoned Sarlacc pit for gladiator fights. Normally since the gladiators are slaves all the 32 families are slaver houses.” Hanta explains, “See where I’m going with this?”

“I think I do, you think the Jin’gwan is one of these 32 houses?” Uraraka asks.

“Oh, we know the Jin’gwan is here, it’s obvious.” Mina smirks, “It’s just a question of where.”

The four have a simultaneous look around, observing the environment and trying not to be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of this apparent tournament.

“What’ll we do once we find the Jin’gwan?” Tsu thinks aloud, hoping for someone to offer a plan even though she was supposed to be the leader.

“Well, here’s my plan: all gladiators get to keep their personal weapons and equipment, right? This is Tatooine, no one cares about fairness. The only rule is you can’t hire anyone, no sabotage and we all gotta wear our house colours--”

“That’s three rules, retard.” Mina interrupts.

“Shut up-- anyway, the prize is 10% of the winnings to the slave (which is still like a couple million) and usually they get a single wish. This wish is normally like ‘gimme a girl’ or ‘clear my criminal background’, anything reasonable.” Hanta explains the rules of the arena and subsequently, the beginnings of his plan.

“Where’s this going?” Uraraka shakes her head, furrowing her brow.

“Well, say Mina n’ I were to enter the tournament as the Jin’gwan’s gladiators, we win obvious because there won’t be any competition and we demand where the slaves is with our wish!” Hanta finishes his plan to a party of intrigued women.

“Both of you?” Tsu asks.

“If we market ourselves as two halves of a whole it’s allowed. Usually you get teams of two or three slaves, it’s actually kinda rare you get just the one unit.” Mina explains for Hanta.

“Where do we come in? You can’t just expect you’ll win and hinge your whole plan on the assumption you’re better than everyone else’s champions.” Uraraka stresses, thinking of a better plan going off Hanta’s.

“How about Mina and Hanta work separately so we have double the chance of winning, Uraraka and I can get jobs of sorts and we can rig the games so we have as high a chance as possible.” Tsu suggests.

“These games never were about playin’ fair but… If you get caught you’re officially fucked.” Mina shakes her head.

"I agree, but these are risks I'd rather take over breaking the news to Darth Katsuki." Tsu nods.

"More like Darth Dickbag! What's your boss's deal?" Hanta asks in a high pitched voice that screams 'what now?'

"He's probably the most ruthless Sith Lord on the dark council. He's currently training an apprentice on top of the two Sith Lords that never leave his side." Uraraka explains although she had never met the man herself, only heard horror stories from the other agents and what Tsu had told her.

“So why does he need these slaves so bad?” Hanta asks, bringing up a previous topic of conversation that had been left unanswered.

“If we knew, believe us we would’ve told you. I would want to know why I’m risking my life too.” Tsu answers for her and Uraraka.

In truth, Hanta and Mina found it better to never ask questions in their line of work, doing so practically stamps your ticket to hell. It’s better to keep your head down and not ask why the boxes they’re transporting smell the way they do.

The two only cared about how much money they were being given to keep quiet, money they would quickly spend because of how short a lifespan they likely had. Only now, this case warranted some answers. Hanta just shot at a Jedi and they had never before worked for a Sith lord, this was new territory for the two and they weren’t happy.

“Fair enough, but no more bullshit, right? We’re partners now, ‘specially if we’re goin’ through this.” Hanta outstretches his arm, offering a hand to shake.

“Fair, but you better not mess this up for us.” Tsu shakes his hand with a nod.

“So, Hanta offers himself as a gladiator for the Jin’gwan and Mina offers herself to someone on the other side of the bracket. Tsu could get a job as a janitor and take away your bodies if you lose, imperial tech can bring someone back from death provided there’s only a five minute gap between when they die and when they’re injected. I can probably offer myself as a servant to another house and set up in a royal box to rig the game for you.” Uraraka briefs the plan with three tentative sets of eyes glued to her, swallowing her words.

“If that’s all we better split up, the announcer’s chamber is about 500 meters that way, if you talk to someone there you might be able to land a job, I hear they’re always short-staffed.” Mina tells the others after Uraraka finishes, looking Tsu up and down. “Although, you mightn’t get very far wearing your uniform.”

“I didn’t think about that.” Uraraka cups her hands over her mouth in thought, cursing silently under her breath.

“No sweat, we c’n just cover it up with like a shawl or summin’.” Hanta suggests, taking off his coat and draping it over Tsu’s shoulders revealing a very thin, stretched black shirt that hangs low on his thin frame. “Just give it back when you get ya uniform, ‘kay?”

As Tsu acknowledges Hanta’s request, Mina does the same, taking off her coat and giving it to Uraraka who takes a subtle sniff before putting it on. Under her coat Mina was wearing nothing but a black sports bra that looked like it was well loved.

“I’ll go with Uraraka t’ get her a job at the Ra’null house ov’r there.” Hanta says, taking Uraraka’s hand and walking away to the red and yellow stained tarp house.

“I guess I’ll go market myself to the masses.” Mina gives a curt salute before walking off leaving Tsu to herself.

Tsu begins to walk towards the announcer’s box only to be stopped by a guard when she tries to enter.

“What d’ya want, little lady?” He asks, looking down on her with spear in hand, his partner on the left side of him barely holding in snickers.

“I want a job, I hear you’re short staffed on janitors at the moment.” Tsu informs him, completely unphased by his armoured stature.

The guard looks at his partner expectantly but he just shrugs. “Try the morgue down in the pit, get hired there.”

After some flitting around and constant redirection, Tsu finds the morgue and the people she needed to talk to in order to get hired. Luckily for her they were so short staffed they welcomed her with open arms, ecstatic to have someone new in their midst.

Mina found a house on the other side of the bracket that wanted her for her abilities, as she watched the tiles flicker on the overhead bracket and tick over to crudely spell out ‘Pinky’. 

Some fumbling can be heard around a microphone that can be chalked up to someone sitting down and putting on a headset. When a voice is heard the crowd roar in excitement.

“Alright and we’re back! I see a few new recruits appearing on the screen, we got Pinky for the Dan’goon house and Cellophane for the Jin’gwan! By the looks of thing they’re both Mandalorians that live here on Tatooine as bounty hunters, and here I thought the Jin’gwan enjoyed throwing slaves into the pit.” The announcer, who to Uraraka and Tsu sounded a lot like Admiral Yamada but that was neither here nor there, yells whilst throwing some shade at the Jin’gwan. 

“The bracket’s closing! We only got five- no FOUR spots left people! We will be starting in two hours and if we still got blank spots in the bracket we’re givin’ ‘em to our esteemed listeners! So, if you wanna jump in the ring for a chance at 100% of the money go for it! But remember, our little event here is to the death. So make sure to kiss your wife g’bye first!”

‘Nice going Hanta’ was all Mina could think when she heard ‘Cellophane’ as she was being escorted down into the ready room by a few of her house’s men. Sure enough, Hanta was nowhere to be found being on the other side of the bracket, but at least she knew he was contributing to the plan. She’s given a scarf with the colours of blue and white lining them and told to wear it so it’s visible to the public.

Hanta also was told to wear a scarf with the Jin’gwan colours on it, putting it on and checking his equipment for the upcoming fight, even though it was little under two hours away. He silently prays to whatever God likely doesn’t exist that their plan will go smoothly and he won’t have to fight without his jacket. He gets snapped out of his thoughts when the door slides open again to reveal none other than the great Commander Tsuyu Asui in a meer janitor’s uniform.

“Don’t laugh.” She croaks, handing a folded jacket to him which he graciously takes. “Was that you being called? Cellophane?”

“Oh yeah, in my line of work we don’t give our actual names to people who don’t need t’know ‘em” Hanta nods, putting on the familiar jacket and snuggling into it as a reunion thing. “It makes it easier to kill people if you ain’t got an identity of your own.”

“Why Cellophane? If you don’t mind me asking.” Tsu takes a seat opposite Hanta, leaning in with her hands folded into her lap.

“Mina gave it to me, she said it’s ‘coz I’m so see-through. I told her she was wrong but I ain’t never been able to lie to her where she hasn’t called me out.” Hanta explains the origin of his nickname.

“Any other reason? That sounds kinda mean, why’d you go along with it?” Tsu asks him, puzzled.

“That’s what I thought, I was like ‘hey, that’s mean ya pink shit’. But she followed it up by sayin’ Cellophane because I’m so rare, n’ that she’d never seen an actual piece o’ cellophane before, n’ that she never seen someone like me before either.”

“That’s nice, do you think she likes you?” 

“Oh na, we’ve had that conversation before n’ we don’t see ourselves as anythin’ but brother and sister.” Hanta laughs Tsu off, knowing that the love he had for Mina was purely platonic and he had absolutely no desire to date her and knew she felt exactly the same way.

“What happened to Uraraka? Did you deliver her to the Ra’null?”

“Oh yeah, she’s perfectly safe.”


	6. Imperials - Chapter 3

Although Hanta's wording could've been better, Uraraka was indeed, safe. Although for how much longer was not preordained. Uraraka had already been forced into a skintight dress and told to serve lustful men against her will. 

The things she did for her job.

She had already thrown her duffle bag into an easily accessible area inside the arena, obscure from view by onlookers. 

What she had set up was a special rifle that held tangible bullets instead of shooting pre-made lasers. This way she could descretely shoot her target without the trail that came with a laser.

As Uraraka serves more couples and thinks of various ways to dispatch them she watches four figures ascend the ramp. 

The one to Uraraka's far left had two-toned hair with his eyes mismatched as well. He wore armour that was rather heavy looking and a robe on top of it. 

On his arm is a very beautiful woman with black hair that's been tied into a large side ponytail. She wears red robes that leave a large gap for her chest (which is also large) and a thick yellow belt. She appears to be desperately clutching the hole in her torso shut to ward off the men with bad intentions.

The man beside her is very tall with muscle mass to match his appearance (think one and a quarter Urarakas). He has white hair that has been fashioned into an angle and black irises but apart from that his face is hidden by a black mask connecting to his gear. There was little left in the galaxy that had the ability to scare Uraraka, but this man looked as though he could be insanely terrifying.

The man on the end was about Uraraka’s height if not slightly taller with a messy mop of green hair, she looks to his belt and sure enough sees a sleek, white, double-edged lightsaber. She recognises him instantly as the shadow that was listening in on their conversation before Hanta shot him.

“Jedi, four of them. Our green buddy and three others: one tall, one female, and one with two tone hair.” She whispers into her communicator to Tsu who was on the other end.

The green Jedi leans over his tall friend to nudge the female lightly, getting her attention so he can whisper something to her that Uraraka can’t hear. She says nothing in response and instead nods.

“Four strangers enter my sky palace, a temple that the Jedi envy, how are you lovely people doing today?” Her boss gives a hearty smile, his voice hoarse from an abundance of alcohol and tobacco. “Especially you, young lady. Maybe I can work out a deal with your boy toy to see how long you’d like to stay here.”

The female’s face flashes a distinct emotion of disgust briefly before she turns into her male companion’s shoulder to hide it. Unfortunately the raider notices and decides to change his attitude.

“Funny you mention four strangers, that’s exactly the amount of people we’re looking for right about now.” The large man folds his arms, his voice deep and his words to the point. “They have knowledge of our slaves, slaves that’ve been stolen from us.”

Their slaves?! Those slaves were the property of Darth Katsuki not the republic, maybe some of them were republic citizens before, but if a planet takes over another planet, its the first planet’s planet, right?

“Sorry buddy, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The raider swivels in his seat, placing one leg over the other in a display of laidback smugness.

“Do you not know or have we just not offered enough credits yet?” The two-toned man suggests.

After a long and tedious argument between the party that had presented themselves, much of it taking place outside, they came to a conclusion that the large intimidating man would cover for the shorter two-toned Jedi. Uraraka watches the board click over to display his name as he’s escorted out by two guards that forward him to the anteroom.

Uraraka makes a split second decision to run after him. “Sir, can you please take this? My friend’s competing, her name is Pinky and you’re in her bracket. I know she won’t win but she wouldn’t listen to me! We had a fight after she gave me her jacket and I haven’t seen her since. It’s her lucky jacket and I feel like trash for not being there for her and--”

“Fine! I’ll take the fucking jacket, just chill out!” He snaps, taking Mina’s jacket from her and folding it into his armour.

Uraraka wipes the tears off her face, content with her acting ability. She just hoped Mina would continue the lie when he got to her, but Mina seemed smart enough to catch on.

\---

As Tsu left Hanta alone again to his own preparations, him and Mina notice the large board over the pit change again, this time a few tiles above Mina’s entry.

“And the Ra’null have their slot filled with a chiss named ‘Mezo Shoji’! That leaves two spots left people! One hour to go and we’ll start the tournament, in 30 minutes we’ll open remaining slots to the public!” The announcer booms the news before going offline again.

Mina looks up to see the space above her name blank, meaning either her opponent house is having trouble finding a gladiator and it might be her fighting a civilian. What’s worse was Uraraka not being able to return her jacket yet.

As soon as these thoughts cross her mind the door to her ready room opens and a man is thrown inside, stumbling and falling on his knees. He gets back up to wallop the guards but the door closes too quickly.

She watches him take a few deep breaths and take off his hood revealing naturally white hair. He looks around the room seeing Mina who gives a forced smile.

“You uh, Pinky?” He approaches her, rummaging around in his robes to pull a neatly folded jacket. “Your friend wanted me to give this to you, gave quite a sob story too.”

Sob story? Probably Uraraka trying to guilt the man into doing her work for her, made sense though. Mina takes the jacket from him, unfolding it to admire the familiar clothing item.

“Well, thanks. I’m glad you gave it to me.” Mina says, although she wouldn’t admit it, he was genuinely thanking him. “I was hoping I could die with this on.”

“So you know you’re going to die?” He asks in surprise at her honesty.

“I have a distinct hunch.” She says, her lips pressed together in a thin line. She knew this was a lie because even if she did die, Tsu would revive her provided she did her job.

The man sits down, beginning to remove his shoulder pads and other bound armour until he was only wearing his base robes.

“You gotta undress in front of me?” Mina looks away as he unwinds the cloth on his upper body.

“I didn’t think Mandalorian chicks were so proper.” He teases. “Nah, I’m sorry. We only have 45 minutes to get ready and I don’t want to destroy my only set of clothes.”

“Fair enough. You Mezo Shoji?” She asks, assuming his identity based on the name newest added to the board.

“That’s me.” He nods, now shirtless except for the mask that still fit well on his face. His gear scattered on the floor.

“Funny, the announcer called you Chiss, you aren’t blue though.” Mina deducts watching his pull two white sticks out of his bag, 10 or so inches in length each with buttons and machine parts making up their bodies.

“Yeah, I’m actually human by birth, Corellian if you wanna get technical but I was raised by a Chiss mother so I usually tell people I’m Chiss.” Shoji explains, placing the sticks either side of his belt, the machines sticking themselves to the belt magnetically.

“What’re those?” Mina asks, pointing to the white sticks. “weapons?”

“I suppose, but telling you would spoil the surprise.” He stands up, pacing around the underground room.

“Aw, you’re no fun.” Mina pouts, checking her own weapons and tools. “Can I guess?”

“You won’t get it right.” Shoji teases, welcoming her challenge.

“Won’t I now?” Mina smirks, “Are they some kind of tasers? Like electrocute-y things?”

“Uh, no.” Shoji answers.

“Can you shoot lasers out of them or something? Like a ‘pew’ ‘pewpew’.” She makes motions like she’s pressing the buttons and shooting lasers out of the sticks.

“No, but that’d be cool.” Shoji laughs at her antics.

They both hear the announcer start up again as tiles flick over underneath the name ‘Mezo Shoji’. This time a name didn’t appear, but two sets of numbers.

“Aaaand that last minute entry from the Ran’din house in the form of a Trandosian and a Twi’lek, cements our final two spots as being open to the public! If you’re interested in claiming either of these spots, come over to the announcer’s booth and sign on up!” The announcer’s voice comes through the earth and into the chamber holding the two, the noise reaching Hanta too who was still alone in his room.

“Are you in position, Uraraka?” Tsu whispers into her communicator after hearing the disturbing news about the four Jedi.

“No, not yet. I’m serving two Jedi, not sure where the green one is but I have the woman and half n’ half.” She returns the call, whispering in an equally hushed tone.

“Okay, as long as we can keep track of three.” Tsu nods to herself, pushing the janitorial cart around to give the illusion of productivity. “What about that gladiator one? Which side of the bracket is he?”

“He’s a few matches away from Mina so she’ll face him first, assuming he plows through everyone else that is.” Uraraka answers, looking up to the board again. “The only strings I’ll be pulling are gonna be for Mister Sero I feel.”

“That’s fine, I got the med-paks on hand so Mina won’t die. I feel bad sending her knowingly against a Jedi.”

“Don’t, we’re lucky we split them up with that giant road block in the way.” Uraraka says softly to calm Tsu. “But I guess that means we’re counting on Hanta to pull through for us.”

“I honestly trust him with this, with the way he found that Jedi back at the camp? He’s clearly force sensitive.” Tsu admits, turning her cart into a hallway and getting out a broom to sweep the metal floor of sand grains.

“Well, I guess I’m meant to trust you.” 

Tsu hears some yelling in the background of Uraraka’s call and promptly gets hung up on. If Tsu was being honest she was terrified of this turn of events, the whole Jedi thing and the fact one of them was unaccounted for and the other was to face the man they have their lives hanging on. Mina too, she was going to face him first with little to no help from their support sniper (who, Tsu will admit, was doing a pretty good job).

Tsu looks out the entrance to see the board tick over with all the tiles displaying the minimum of a name or a number. She calculates the hunter’s paths to victory again, seeing every possibility over-shadowed by that Mezo guy.

The matches would start in 15 minutes and the tournament itself would go on for quite a few hours. These are hours Tsu was certain she couldn’t afford.

Within five minutes the remaining spots have been filled with hopeful civilians ready to try their luck at the jackpot. Unfortunately it was painfully obvious to Tsu they’d all be crushed before the semi finals.

As the timer on the board counted down, so did the crowd. Tsu watches as two men are escorted to the gate she was sweeping at in chains. The shackles are unlocked and weapons layed out in front of them for them to pick the combinations that suited them.

Tsu watches as they pick combinations that suited them and test out their new weapons.

She leaves them be and hurries to the body pit, and subsequently, the crematorium.

“Hey, what’re you doing here?” A skittish janitor asks her as she shuts the door behind herself.

“I’m your replacement, I’m manning the room for today. You’re sweeping the entrance chambers.” She informs, a complete lie but an expression of relief washes the poor boy’s face as he wheels his cart out of the room.

She was about to call after him, letting him know she had no clue how to man the incinerator but as she looks the machine over she notices instructions taped onto the side of the machine. It seems like no one has time to instruct the new janitors on how to work it so they just stuck the manual on the side and hoped that would be enough.

Hanta’s first battle consisted of two terrified slaves which he quickly mowed down, shooting both in the head once and not letting them even think about fighting back.

Mina’s match was essentially a mirror of that. Two slaves scared shitless, completely decimated by the pink-haired bounty hunter.

Over about two hours Hanta climbs the bracket with quite a bit of ease, only encountering the odd difficult-to-dodge blaster fire or close-to-the-body vibroblade.

Mina however was another story entirely, breezing through her second match with no problem whatsoever. Only as the bracket tiles continued to tick over to display the winners of each round, Mina notices the name directly above her’s. ‘Mezo Shoji’.

Uraraka on the other hand was listening in on the conversation between the two-toned Todoroki and Master red-robes. Or that was what they were referring to each other as. 

“Shoji’s made it this far, we’re likely winning this.” Todoroki sighs, his face in his right hand putting his weight on the arm-rest. “It’s hard to watch, he’s really killing those people.”

“Whenever someone dies, there’s an imbalance in the force to the favour of the dark side. This is a very dark place but Shoji is not contributing.” The woman shakes her head, “He’s hurting them, yes, but he is not killing them.”

“I’ve felt that too.” Todoroki admits, looking down at the bloodied sand after Hanta’s second victory. “I also feel bad about sending Midoriya away to find the slaves, what if he’s caught! It’d be the second person I’ve hurt today.”

“You give yourself too much credit. Shoji wanted to take your place, Midoriya wanted to scout. You aren’t responsible for anything that happens to them.” She places a hand on his knee which he meets with his left hand.

“It still makes me worry. Midoriya’s sneaking around and if he gets caught we have no chance catching up to these imperials. The lives of innocents are at stake, the republic won’t do anything about it but--”

“We won’t fail.” She cuts him off, telling him like it was fact instead of a hope they shared.

Uraraka does her best to not turn up her nose at the sentiment, she knew these Jedi would stop at nothing to rescue these people. Her outfit was definitely not going to have a good time if these Jedi were as determined as they sounded.

She would have to convince the others to play dirty if they even stood a chance at beating these warriors. This was actually pretty easy in theory, play to the emotions and morals of a Jedi and they bend to make a compromise, much unlike the Sith.

Uraraka excuses herself from the pair with a smile and a bow, going outside to call Tsu discreetly.

“I have an idea, but it requires your help and Hanta’s knowing about it to work.” Uraraka begins as Tsu picks up.

“Hello Ochaco, how are you?” Tsu deadpans in response to Uraraka’s command. “Cremation is as fun as it sounds.”

“Sorry, but I found a way we can get ahead of the Jedi!” Uraraka apologises only briefly before starting back up again. “Think about it, I can kill Shoji, we restrain him then revive him and we have a bartering chip.”

“What are we bartering for? If we kill Shoji we win the location of the slaves anyway.” Tsu asks, confused.

“The Jedi don’t seem to be prepared to relent that easily, with Shoji we can force them to give up then give him back. That way the Jedi can’t go back on their word without breaking the Jedi code!” Uraraka explains into the communicator.

“Immoral, but a good idea.”

“When have we ever been about morality?”

“True enough, why do you need Hanta to be in on this?”

“Because if he acts like a wimp and then takes out the big bad Jedi, that looks like blatant cheating.”

“I’ll see if I can call him.” Tsu agrees, ending the call and trying to remember if she had Hanta’s contact, fiddling through her contacts until the audio cue tells her she did indeed have a Hanta Sero in her contacts.

He picks up and in hushed tones asks her what she wanted.

“Uraraka was planning on killing the Jedi for you in the finals, she just wanted to let you know that she doesn’t want you looking obviously overwhelmed and then able to kill a Jedi.”

“Makes sense. But you should remember I’m a professional, Commander. I got this.” He understandingly says.

“This isn’t about us trusting you, it’s about you trusting your support.” Tsu tells him off, having to stop when another body falls down the pit to be cremated. “Be safe, okay? We’re still riding on you to make this work.”


	7. Imperials and Jedi - Chapter 1

Even though she couldn’t see it, Hanta nods and hangs up the call. Tournament rules prohibited the contestants from getting outside help and thus that call was against the rules.

“Now now listeners, I hope you’re excited because we got one hell of a matchup here! The bubbly bounty hunter with bright pink hair whose pyrotechnics and pistol blasts have lit up the arena. Pinky!” The announcer cries, drawing out the ‘e’ in Pinky as the crowd cheers. “Versus, the intimidating Chiss with the terrifying mask and even more scary weaponry: Mezo Shoji!”

Again, screams and hoots fill the arena as Mina recognises the name of her defacto friend from earlier. It made her wonder how easily he tore through the competition to get here armed only with a pair of sticks. Either those sticks are really powerful or he’s just a naturally gifted at fighting.

Either way, he was done for.

Mina skips out of the gate and into the arena, sun beating down on her as she watches an equally bloodstained Shoji enter the field from the otherside. 

If she was honest, she didn’t know how this match would go. Shoji was pretty terrifying and no doubt unpredictable, but Mina was confident she had Uraraka watching her back.

Uraraka walks back into the overhead box, watching the match with Todoroki and his master.

“Didn’t Midoriya point out that pink lady earlier?” The master asks no one in particular, leaning forward in her chair to get a better look.

“It is likely, although I don’t have much clue as to the Imperial’s plans.” Todoroki shakes his head. 

“They’re likely one step ahead.” The woman shakes her head as the unmistakable sound of an electronic countdown starts the fight.

“I hope she doesn’t have something up her sleeve.” Todoroki sighs in reference to Mina, under different circumstances the answer would’ve been yes but Uraraka had decided to leave her to the dogs. It was better that way, or else the two best friends would have to fight each other to the death, much better to make the Jedi bump one of them off so Uraraka had less work to do.

Hanta wasn’t allowed to watch the fight but he did look at the scoreboard beforehand. Hanta was impressed Mina had made it as far as she had, but against another named competitor things had a chance of turning ugly. He was told to trust their support by Tsu, although he wasn’t sure he could with recent events.

Mina did a few subtle stretches, hopping back and forth on both feet and preparing to face her opponent. She looks at him stand there unmoving, sticks in either hand waiting for Mina to move.

She begins by shooting a laser straight into Shoji from 300 meters away, the distance meaning the laser had lost its potency and was nothing more than light when it reached Shoji.

Both parties advance on one another, until they’re within 100 meters of each other. Mina shoots two follow up lasers into Shoji’s torso. Instead, two long beams come out the sticks with a resounding ‘shing’ sound effect, deflecting both the shots as soon as they were fired.

Shoji drops both beams to his side, gripping the hilts tightly. His left weapon is a light blue colouration and his right a light green. Mina looks on in awe as she’s rushed by Shoji, ducking under the green one as it comes for her, parallel to her neck. She quickly rolls away from him, hand in front of her in a frog like stance.

She clicks her munitions belt and takes a round device with a glowing red button on top. She presses the button and as soon as she hears a quiet sequence of beeps she lobs it at Shoji, pressing a button on her gauntlet which activates two jets on her boots throwing her into the air.

Shoji catches onto her plan rather quickly, ignoring her for a second and picking up the bomb at his feet. He throws it in the air and kicks it away from him as it comes back down to foot height. 

The beeping becomes faster and faster until the bomb fulfils its life purpose, exploding into pieces of shrapnel. Instead of spraying everywhere like it was designed to do, the small fragments of bomb keep in mid-air, their kinetic energy desperately wanting to be released. 

Shoji’s shaky left hand is directed at the explosion’s epicenter, his focus unwavering as he begins pulling the explosion to his right, towards Mina.

“Amazing, he just used the force to stop the explosion.” Todoroki leans forward in his chair, analysing every inch of Shoji’s technique.

“It is very impressive.” The master smiles contently.

Uraraka couldn’t help but grip her serving tray tightly as she watches Mina continue to run around the arena, seemingly wanting to avoid the Jedi.

It was all her fault Mina was trusting in Uraraka to be her ex machina whilst she had given up hope for her. She didn’t want Mina to think she was saving her energy for Hanta, but if she saved Mina now, she would have to fight Hanta in the finals and that would be just as painful as death.

Uraraka’s knuckles were white for how tightly she was carrying the drinks she was giving the Jedi in her care, guilt forcing her to look away from the fight entirely.

“I sense your turmoil from over here, girl.” The master addresses Uraraka who turns to meet her gentle smile. “She’s your friend, isn’t she. I saw you tell Shoji your story, it must be difficult watching this.”

“I’m meant to protect her, ma’am. I failed.” Uraraka opens up, only giving half the story but still telling the truth.

“It’s not your fault.” Todoroki enters the conversation, “We’ve all made mistakes and made promises we weren’t able to commit to.”

“Just this promise concerns someone’s life.” Uraraka wipes away real tears, she didn’t know why she was suddenly so emotional over Mina. She knew Tsu was ready to bring her back from the brink as soon as she fell down the hole. Maybe it was the guilt of not fulfilling her role as support.

“Maybe you should take the rest of the day off.” The woman suggests.

Uraraka’s eyes light up through the tears although she’s convinced the Jedi didn’t see it. Taking the day off would be perfect, especially if she had these two to vouch for her. “I think I might, thank you Master.”

“Take care, dear.” She smiles, taking her hand gently.

Uraraka races down the hallway to the abandoned box where she had her gear set up, quickly getting flat in the prone position, nesting the gun in her shoulder and pulling the scope to her eye, watching the carnage.

Mina was still darting around the place, the odd pistol fire here and there but for the most part she was playing cat and mouse with a Jedi. Uraraka bit her lip as she watched Shoji grab onto Mina’s boot when she goes to take off again, slamming her into the ground with quite a bit of force. At this point he had sheathed one of his lightsabers to have a hand free, using that hand to slam Mina into the ground a further three times by her neck until she didn’t get up.

The crowd goes wild as the names tickover showing Shoji advancing. From the ready-room, Hanta loses the ability to breath momentarily. He stares at the letters that fall away from his friend’s name, her record terminated from the board.

Luckily, everything on Tsu’s end goes as planned. The body of Mina falls through the ceiling, thumping on the floor below. Tsu props her up on the wall and goes to administer the med-pak when her hand passes under Mina’s nose, feeling her soft breath. Tsu quickly checks her pulse and places a hand over her chest, sure enough Mina was still alive.

Tsu smirks to herself, mentally thanking whatever God exists for a Jedi that still upheld the code.

Uraraka leans away from the scope, completely dumbfounded. Although that was dumb in and of itself, she knew what would happen to Mina. She also knew Tsu would revive her, it was just the guilt of not being there for Mina that hurt Uraraka.

She hears the beep that tells her she was being called, she picks up to hear Tsu’s voice. “Ochaco? Mina is alive down here, I hope you were saving your bullets for Sero’s fight.”

“Oh yeah, I think he’ll need it.” Uraraka straightens herself up physically and talks with a more courage and intensity than what she was feeling. “So, we’re down one of those med-paks?”

“Actually no, she was alive when she dropped. The Jedi kept her alive.” Tsu informs Uraraka. “Makes me wonder how many living people I’ve cremated today.” she shudders.

“Oh jeez, I feel sorry for you.” Uraraka sharply inhales at the thought.

“Don’t be, Ochaco. I’ve done worse.” Tsu lies. “Also, Mina isn’t that happy with you.”

“Why not?”

“Uh, you didn’t shoot the? You didn’t provide support to your ally.”

“Fair enough.” Uraraka runs a hand through her hair, sighing at the thought of her failure.

“Make sure Hanta doesn’t lose.” Tsu instructs her before hanging up and tending to Mina again.

Uraraka sits in the box, overlooking the arena for some time after, watching the next fights for Hanta and the Jedi.

Soon the announcer calls the final fight, “The match we’ve all been waiting for! Blood and tears have been shed and now it’s time for our curtain call. On one side of the arena we have a mercenary (who wasn’t hired to participate, I’ve been assured) by the name of Cellophane!”

Cheers fill even Tsu’s ears as Hanta enters the stage, fixing his jacket and dragging the goggles that usually rested on his hairline down to his eyes with a smile. He presses a few buttons on his gauntlet to activate it then waits for his opponent.

“Poor Cellophane though, he happens to be up against my personal favourite and according to polls 70% of yours-- the Chiss with uncanny powers, Mezo Shoji!”

Hanta watches Shoji’s entrance, nothing too spectacular but he wastes no time unsheathing his weapons. Hanta wasn’t too focused on him though, instead he was worried about his support and the fact the general public were rooting for his opponent. Nothing special of course, happens all the time in his line of work, but this guy was mysterious and the other contestants weren’t allowed to view matches.

So whatever this guy had done to win the audience’s favour was beyond Hanta yet staring him in the face.

Uraraka leans into her set up, very prepared to shoot the shit out of their Jedi friend and claim victory for Cellophane. She knew Hanta had probably lost confidence in her which was both good and bad. Bad because of the obvious, losing trust is way easier than gaining it. But also good because it meant Hanta wouldn’t be relying on her to give him that extra push, he would be fighting for his life.

The fight began, the two parties move in. Hanta knew he couldn’t win but he sure as fuck didn’t wanna lose. Hanta hits his boosters, leaping into the air and emptying two dual magazines into Shoji, none of which hit either being deflected or missing.

From Uraraka’s point of view it was the Jedi on the defensive and Hanta trying to create an opening for himself. So far Hanta wasn’t successful in his endeavour, instead continuing to dart around the Jedi who does nothing but follow Hanta with his eyes and deflect his blasts.

Eventually Shoji strikes, cutting the bottom of Hanta’s right boot sending him plummeting to the ground, forcing him to bite the sand.

The bounty hunter scrambles to right himself as the Jedi walks over to finish the job, kicking Shoji’s shin to buy himself some time. Managing to get enough distance between him and the deadly weapon so he could reload before he could be rushed once more.

Hanta takes the chance to empty quite a few rounds into his opponent, either missing or having them deflected.

“You fight pretty dirty, huh?” Shoji straightens himself up, centering his energy for the next attack.

“I try not to disappoint.” Hanta rolls his neck a few times whilst hopping on the spot.

“I had a little birdy tell me you managed to find a stealthed shadow. You force sensitive, Cellophane? Or can I call you Sero?” Shoji turns off his left blade, throwing it to Hanta who picks it up confused. “Ever used a vibroblade?”

“Why are you doing this?” Hanta asks, eyeing up the stick.

“You could make a decent Jedi.” Shoji admits, rolling his wrist and subsequently his weapon.

“So you want me to use this?” Hanta asks.

Uraraka looks down on the fight seeing a stunning lack of actual fighting, all the while trying to find a subtle opening. She curses under her breath asking him what he’s doing even though she knows he can’t hear him.

She could easily take the shot now, hell, she could’ve taken the shot whenever she wanted. It was only now a matter of making his death look natural, which was easier said than done, especially when he’s been evading Hanta’s blasts and could just detect her bullet.

She needed Hanta’s help as much as he needed her’s.

It shocked her when Hanta unsheathes Shoji’s weapon, the blue beam reflecting onto Hanta’s face giving his black hair a blue-ish tinge. 

Saber hits saber when Hanta leaps at Shoji who parries with ease, putting some force behind his own blade to throw Hanta off of him. 

Hanta tries again, going for an overhead jab as he assumed it couldn’t be blocked. In doing so he leaves his middle open, getting punched in the gut by Shoji which winds him.

“You left your mid open going for that attack, I could’ve speared you right then.” Shoji instructs Hanta as he gets back up.

“But’cha didn’t.” Hanta says smugly adopting a defensive stance, changing roles with Shoji.

Shoji claws his hand, bringing it to the other side of his body in a sweeping motion. An unknown force pulling Hanta off his feet, slamming into the ground again.

As he groans in pain, Shoji towers over Hanta. “I’m not gonna kill you, ‘kay? You gotta act like I did though or they won’t buy it.”

The disarmed Hanta meets Shoji’s gaze and has a quick think about the proposition, eventually deciding on grabbing for his gun and putting a hole in Shoji.

Uraraka watches him perform the action, taking the opportunity to put two holes of her own in the unsuspecting Jedi’s back.

All three of the shots hit, felling the towering man nearly instantaneously.

As Shoji accepts death silently on the ground Hanta takes both his weapons, sliding them into a pouch on his belt.

The crowd goes silent until Hanta raises his gun to the sky firing once. The audience loses their shit with exclamations of mostly disbelief and about 30% ‘I told ya so’. Hanta looks up to the royal box underneath the Ra’null house after hearing a shrill cry from the raven haired woman.

Hanta pays it no mind, dropping the weapon to his side and dusting down his jacket, basking in the sweet victory when the announcer comes online again. “Our winner people! Cellophane from the Jin’gwan house against most of our predictions has taken out the title of this year’s arena champion!”


	8. Imperials and Jedi - Chapter 2

Hanta gets escorted off the arena field, silently thanking Uraraka for the extra help as he knew the one pistol blast couldn’t have taken down someone like Shoji, even at point blank. 

When Shoji’s body drops down the chute Mina cheers loudly, much to Tsu’s annoyance.

Tsu props him up against the wall and prepares the med-pak she was going to use on Mina. 

“Bind him.” She instructs Mina who produces a small amount of laser rope from her pack, twisting the middle of it making it double in length.

When Mina had finished binding Shoji Tsu injects him with the syringe, causing the man to awake and gasp for air. “Don’t try to escape or we kill you for good.” Tsu threatens.

Shoji nodded instead of answering, probably acknowledging the lack of an empty threat from Tsu.

Tsu turns her back to their hostage to make a call to the sniper of the hour. “Ochaco, I need you to go back to the two Jedi and tell them we have Mezo alive. I think we can barter with them.”

“What do you mean?” Uraraka asks her whilst packing up her gear into her dufflebag.

“I revived Shoji with the med-pak, we can use Hanta’s wish to find out where our slaves are then give the Jedi their companion back in exchange for them backing off.”

“What?”

“Think about it, we give Shoji back to his friends under the condition they stop following us. The Jedi can’t take him then kill us because that’d be against the Jedi code, and they can’t break their word for the same reason.” Tsu explains to Uraraka who gives a slightly evil snicker.

“Win-win for us, loss for them.”

“Precisely.”

“Do you really think they’ll go along with it?” Uraraka shakes her head whilst taking off her aim helper and putting it in her pocket.

“I think they will. I think I’ll handle Hanta and the Jin’gwan if you can take on the trade with Mina.” Tsu divides duty, getting ready to call Hanta next.

“Sounds great, let Mina know I’m on my way.” Uraraka hangs up the call, slinging her bag over her shoulder and walking back to the box with the two Jedi.

At the same time Tsu changes her uniform, going to meet Hanta outside the Jin’gwan house’s tarp palace. He smiles upon seeing her and they begin to walk up the ramp together to meet the man at the center, the party in his camp raging harder than ever.

“Cellophane! Man of the hour, buddy this was all your doing. It’s been decades since we’ve seen victory, and I never heard of someone killing a Jedi.” The boss outstretches his arms spilling his beverage in the process. “The committee tells me I gotta give you a wish though, so what’ll it be. Honestly I’ll give you whatever in my power, I love you bud.”

Hanta looks at Tsu, “I don’t wanna mess this up, can you do it?”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

“If you say,” Tsu nods, turning to address the Jin’gwan leader, hands behind her back. “I’m Cellophane’s companion and acting representative, we talked extensively about this before and after.”

“You let this woman speak for you, Cellophane?” The boss laughs.

“I do indeed.” Hanta scowls at his sexism.

"Very well then, what's ya wish?" The boss nods, seemingly too happy to care who spoke for his champion.

"We are under the impression the Jin'gwan are slave traders, we want the slaves you stole from Imperial camp Delta or for you to find out which house does have our slaves." Tsu instructs the boss who thinks for a bit.

"Is Delta the one in the desert about 30 minutes away from the forward base camp you guys have?"

"That's it." Hanta answers for Tsu to show he still had some away in the conversation.

"I think we did take 'em. You only asked for location, right? Well they're on Hoth unless something happened and I doubt anything did." The boss delivers on the wish giving them the location of their slaves.

“Thanks for that, can we have the money now?” Hanta asks, his mind clearly elsewhere when it came to priorities.

“Yeah, sure kid. I’ll get my associates to give you the 10% before you go.” He agrees, sending one of his servants away presumably to get the money. 

Meanwhile, Uraraka bursts into the royal box to meet the two Jedi plus the green one from earlier. “Master Jedi, I need to take you to the crematorium to collect your companion’s equipment.”

The three decide to follow her without any questions, especially weird seeing as she was meant to have taken the rest of the day off. Even weirder seeing as they should be way more concerned about their general safety on a planet like Tatooine.

Uraraka leads them into the crematorium where she meets Mina and a bound Shoji, the shallow gasp behind her saying how well the shock factor worked.

“Pinky too? I thought both of you were dead.” Todoroki states, the guy really was captain obvious.

“Well, imperial technology has advanced.” Uraraka smirks condescendingly.

“What do you want?” The woman scowls.

“Money n’ drugs!” Mina yells at her, taking few steps back in shame when she’s met with silence all around.

“We simply want your word on something.” Uraraka starts back up, hands behind her back giving the bubbly girl an ominous leer.

Mina places her gun to Shoji’s head, “and if ya wanna act up I pop your friend.”

“You’re bluffing.” The green haired one who Uraraka had earlier learned was Midoriya scowls.

“Imperials don’t bluff.” Uraraka lies, what were they dumb? Shooting Shoji was taking away any and all leverage they had.

“What do you want?” The woman cuts to the chase.

“We want you to leave us alone, we want you to forget about our slaves.” Uraraka pulls no punches, leaving absolutely no room for holes in the proposition.

“In exchange for Shoji, you want us to let you have them?” Todoroki asks, just to make sure he was hearing right.

“That’s the one.” Mina smiles.

“We have to think about this.” Midoriya tells his friends, Todoroki nods.

“I’ve already made a decision.” The master informs everyone in the room, “You can keep Shoji.”

Everyone, even Shoji, looks at her in complete shock. Uraraka’s brain going into closet panic mode. “What?” She barely manages.

“I said you can keep him,” She delivers the second part of the shocking statement. “We’re coming with you.”

“Come again?” Uraraka says what everyone was thinking.

“If you want us to stop tracking the slaves, you’re taking us with you.” She explains.

“Are you serious? What could you possibly offer us?” Mina laughs in her face.

“Midoriya.” She turns to the green Jedi who was just as confused as everyone else, “I believe you have something of the Imperials’.”

Midoriya looks at her confused for a second before catching on, pulling from his pocket Uraraka’s report she had dropped earlier.

This report was definitely important, it had every detail concerning their report, and with all the crazy shit that had happened it would be nigh impossible to make a new one from scratch.

Mina decided to say nothing, guessing how important the report was based on her limited knowledge of imperials.

“Unlike you, I want to talk things over with my team.” Uraraka makes her decision whilst throwing shade at the Jedi’s leader. “Mind if I call them?”

“I guess not.” Midoriya answers for the woman, blushing afterwards and refusing to make eye contact, like he had just slaughtered her puppy or something.

As Uraraka leaves the room to call Tsu, Mina goes into anxiety over drive refusing to put the gun down.

“You seem tense.” Todoroki comments on Mina’s shakey pistol grip.

“Please take your finger off the trigger.” Shoji speaks up for the first time causing Mina to jump out of her skin. “I feel insanely uncomfortable with you gripping your gun that tight.”

Mina nearly breaks into tears, withdrawing her gun and sitting down next to Shoji, leaning on him much to his apparent discomfort.

“Can’t we just force persuade her to cut his bonds?” Midoriya leans over and asks his master not so stealthily.

“We do that and we have no way of finding the slaves seeing as the Imperials have all the information we needed.” She responds.

“So? We can just leave after they do.”

“Freeing Shoji means binding this woman, that means we would need to leave immediately. We have no fuel Midoriya, we can’t exactly loiter around or go refuel.” Todoroki explains their situation to him again.

“We really are relying on them saying yes, huh.” The master shakes her head.

Outside the room Uraraka calls Tsu to inform her of the situation. "Commander, uhm. The Jedi want to come with us."

"What do you mean 'come with us'?" Tsu asks hesitantly having wrapped things out with Hants and the Jin'gwan.

"They have my datapad and our report. We're dead if we return to the legion without that report, even if we're successful." Uraraka explains the situation.

"You're right, I guess taking them along will be beneficial. Although what'll happen with the slaves?" Tsu raises the important question.

"Damn, I don't know. Jedi are pretty reasonable though, we should be able to work something out."

"Are you still in the crematorium?" Tsu asks her, altering her and Hanta's course for the small room of death and apparently uncanny alliances.

"Yes, I should make sure Mina hasn't done anything stupid." Uraraka hangs up on Tsu, returning to the little room seeing Mina scared shitless. "Is everything okay here?"

"Think so, your friend just got real scared left alone with us." Midoriya explains the situation to Uraraka who shrugs.

"Yeah, that makes sense." She sighs, "Cellophane and my boss will be down here shortly to discuss the terms of this deal."

“I thought you were the boss.” The inquisitive young Jedi says to Uraraka.

“Well, I’m trying to work my way up the ranks, it’s kinda difficult though.” Uraraka opens up, “Even though I’m probably one of the best shots in the empire they still refuse to give me a promotion.” She frowns.

“Well, a Padawan’s training is not complete when they’ve mastered the lightsaber. They must also learn the Jedi code, meditation, how to use the force--” The leader who had still yet to introduce herself much to the author’s annoyance tries to give Uraraka the analogy.

“What are you saying?” She asks her.

“You might be one of the best in martial skills, but that doesn’t mean you’re fully baked yet. You still need skills apart from your base skill in the gun.” Todoroki finishes his master’s sentence.

“Yeah, but her base skill in the gun still hurts like shit!” Shoji calls into the conversation after a long silence only to be slapped by Yaoyorozu to shut him up again.

The doors slide open again to reveal Tsu and Hanta. Tsu had clearly changed into her imperial uniform again and Hanta had a bulging suitcase containing a considerable sum of money by his side.

“We’re here, hello master Jedi.” Tsu greets the four guests, one still bound.

“Oh, hey Shoji. I got your light thingys, I’m gonna wait to give ‘em to ya though.” Hanta awkwardly greets his former opponent, watching Shoji’s gaze bore into him.

“We were going to go over the terms of the deal, right?” Todoroki asks Tsu.

“Yeah, uh. You want to travel with us?” Tsu asks although she already knew the answer.

“We want to travel to wherever our slaves are.” The master corrects her.

“Our slaves, master. I think the trade is agreeable, but how are we going to split our slaves?” Tsu corrects her, voicing the concern.

“Master Momo Yaoyorozu, and I have been thinking about this.” Yaoyorozu introduces herself, “We can split the slaves into force sensitive and not force sensitive, then we take the sensitive ones.”

“They’re all sensitive.” Uraraka points out.

“Then we take all the republic citizens?” Midoriya suggests.

“That’s splitting it 70/30 in your favour.” Tsu tells him.

“Can’t we just do it 50/50?” Mina suggests instead, all eyes turning to her.

“Yeah, we’re all civilised, right? We just split up the slaves n’ take half each.” Hanta elaborates on Mina’s statement.

“Both of us need to report back with way more than that.” Yaoyorozu scoffs.

“Just make summin’ up, say they all died when they were in enemy hands and we could only get half. Slaves can’t testify under Imp’ law right? And you Jedi can use some sort of force spell or however it works.” Hanta gives both sides an alternative.

"Force spell?" Midoriya mutters under his breath, looking to Master Yaoyorozu.

"I believe these terms are agreeable." Yaoyorozu nods her head. "We can all go to the planet our slaves are on, split them down the middle and take 125 each."

"Alright, with all the power I have I announce a temporary alliance between our two factions." Tsu promises, extending her hand to Yaoyorozu for her to shake.

"As long as the force is my witness I agree to these terms and accept the temporary alliance being created." Yaoyorozu takes Tsu's hand, shaking it firmly yet daintily.

Silence falls the squad of now 8 as they wait for someone to say something.

"Can someone untie me now, please?" Shoji mumbles into the crowd.

"Oh yeah, sorry about that." Mina stops leaning in him and begins unwrapping the bindings.

When everyone was ready to go and Shoji had shaken Hanta down of his lightsabers they head out of the crematorium and to the parking lot, mounting bikes and speeding off in the direction of the airport. Of course stopping on the way to pick up another rental and stop by Mina and Hanta’s house to drop off their speeder.

“We’re out of fuel, would you mind giving us some money?” Todoroki asks as they reach the airport.

“How much would it cost the Jedi order to leave your ship here?” Tsu answers with her own question.

“An inconvenience for the fleet and some paperwork for us.” Shoji says, looking around at all the characters littering the airport.

“That’s putting it lightly, although the republic are the ones that pay for the Jedi’s needs (especially on missions like this) it would be irresponsible for us to take advantage of that.” Yaoyorozu shakes her head.

“I mean, I’m always happy to do paperwork.” Midoriya offers.

“You should join the legion, then. I’d love you around.” Uraraka jokes making Midoriya blush slightly.

“No thanks, I think I’ve found my calling at the temple.” He awkwardly laughs, “Y’see I really like my job there and even though I’ve only just become a Jedi I think that I’m gonna have a great time in the Jedi library with all the other consulars. But I mean, I’m not saying I can’t do the legwork needed to be a good Jedi I just prefer the more scholarly aspects of our order.” 

Midoriya’s rant is met with silence as Uraraka looks to his companions, “Is he always like this?”

“Too soon to say.” Todoroki sighs.

“Are you coming with us in our ship?” Mina asks as the current conversation was going nowhere.

“I suppose so.” Yaoyorozu concedes.

“Do you have to like, call it in or something?” Hanta asks.

“No?” Todoroki answers unsure of the actual answer.

“Not our problem, really.” Shoji smirks.

“Let’s just go.” Mina groans, dragging her gear towards the space taxi.

Again the taxi was disgustingly crowded with all manner of Tatooine natives taking the two minute shuttle. Obviously there was absolutely no small talk between the eight, only the occasional glare exchanged to make sure they were still there or something similar. Perhaps being wary of someone pulling a knife although no one had had that thought.

The second they exit the taxi Uraraka does her best not to gag.

“Oh cummon, wasn’t that bad.” Mina scolds her.

“Will they ask for our passports or whatever?” Todoroki asks.

“I don’t think it matters.” Shoji brushes him off. “We should just get outta here before anyone spots me alive, or worse: with Imperials.”

“You’re very proud, huh.” Tsu says bluntly, taking the insult on the chin.

Those were the last words exchanged between any member of the eight as they walk to the Imperial hanger. No one checks the Jedi when Tsu flashes her badge and gives a quick (albeit bullshit) explanation as to why she wasn’t alone.

When they were all in the shuttle Tsu goes to sit down into the cockpit before she’s stopped by pretty much half the party. 

“Aren’t you a navigator?” Uraraka points out.

Tsu looks at her confused for a second before looking to Uraraka’s right to see Shoji, Hanta and Mina all waiting there expectantly. “I might be.”

Tsu moves over to the navigation chair and plots a course for Hoth, Hanta sits down in the captain’s chair and Mina sits next to him as his co-pilot. Shoji sits down in the cockpit but on a chair in the back corner away from controls. Uraraka, Midoriya, Todoroki and Yaoyorozu are scattered over the ship. Uraraka filling in the holes in her newly re-acquired datapad, Yaoyorozu meditating on the experience on Tatooine and Midoriya boring poor Todoroki to death over Consular lore.


	9. Imperials and Jedi - Chapter 3

The jump to hyperspace is made seamlessly with a full, experienced crew plus one who was observing. The trip to Hoth was silent, which was good, and no one questioned one another.

The ship comes out of hyperspace and into the full view of Hoth, a light blue planet covered in white patches. Shoji gets up from his seat and leaves the cockpit to put his clothes back on as he was still shirtless from the fight. Mina and Hanta do gear checks with Hanta periodically checking up on his completely legitimately won winnings.

Mina pulls the ship into Hoth’s space station, and Tsu calls to the rest of the ship to get ready.

As they’re pulling in Shoji makes a joke about imperial issue winter coats in his size and Yaoyorozu begins freaking out at her lack of clothing. Todoroki begins giving his extra robes and clothing to her to try and make up for it and Midoriya looked like he was going on a four day hike with the way he had packed.

The party exits their ship and walks briskly to the space taxi down to Hoth’s surface, on the way picking up some of the previously joked about Imperial issue coats which were surprisingly to be found in Shoji’s size.

The taxi trip to the surface was much less tortuous than the one on Tatooine, it seemed like the only people travelling to the planet’s surface were those which had business on the planet.

It made sense given how could the planet was at a resting rate and how cold it had been recorded to get.

Again, the taxi ride could be described as ‘tense’ with many untrusting glances being thrown around the place. When they left the Imperial base camp everyone was relieved, even Uraraka and Tsu. 

“How are we going to find the slaves? I don’t suppose you Imperials were given an exact ‘x, y’.” Yaoyorozu folds her arms, asking the location of the slaves.

She’s met with a blank stare from Tsu and a lengthy, ongoing creaking sound from Hanta.

“Master, it should be fine, right? We can use life sensing techniques to find their energy trace.” Midoriya suggests.

“We’d pick up all life on the planet, Midoriya.” Yaoyorozu pokes holes in his plan.

“We would, but how much life is on Hoth? They’re surely keeping all the slaves together, right? We can just follow the largest trace and find them that way.” Midoriya explains.

“Wouldn’t larger beings emit more of whatever you’re sensing?” Tsu asks.

“No, it doesn’t work like that.” Shoji answers, “All living things have the same amount of force, that’s why you’re less likely to find larger alien species as force sensitive.”

“Won’t you pick up the Imperial and Republic camps too?” Mina asks, “They have a lot of people too.”

“Force sensitive people see direction, not position.” Todoroki tells her, “If I were to close my eyes and spin around I’d still be able to point to you because I can see which direction you’re in compared to me.”

“--And?” Uraraka hurries him along.

“So, if you give us a map we can have Midoriya and Master pinpoint the three major signals then have them use the process of elimination to find our slaves.” Todoroki glares at her.

“Our, slaves.” She huffs, “But you’re right, we should get far away from the imperial camp so you can get a better trace.”

“We renting speeders again?” Shoji asks, arms folded.

“I think we should, how else we getting ‘round?” Hanta points out the obvious in Shoji’s question.

“Are we shouting you Jedi?” Uraraka checks her funds, both tangible and virtual. It would be mean to make Hanta pay for all the crew’s expenses with his winnings.

“We have no money other than the cash we stole from you, even then we spent all that.” Todoroki admits, it was pretty obvious anyway they were the ones that stole Uraraka’s money, whose else would it be?

“Are we going two by two again?” Mina pouts.

“I don’t think we have to.” Yaoyorozu shrugs.

“Can Mina n’ I get seperate ones then?” Hanta requests.

“Yeah, sure.” Tsu sighs.

Tsu does the talking when renting the speeders, ordering five in total and handing a set of keys to Shoji, Todoroki, Hanta and Mina.

The bounty Hunters gleefully get the speeders into gear and warm up the engines with a few laps of the parking lot, with Shoji pairing up with Midoriya again and Yaoyorozu discreetly and metaphorically squealing in glee at the thought of more time with Todoroki.

Uraraka gets on the back of the last speeder before Tsu takes the controls, revving the engine.

She pulls out into the wasteland, minding the hoots from a pair of excited Tatooine natives.

“I suggest we head north until we’re far enough away from the Imperial camp.” Tsu calls to the others over the howling wind and snow.

“Sounds like a plan.” Todoroki yells back, riding towards Tsu and stopping just behind her.

Shoji and Midoriya pull up next to Todoroki and Yaoyorozu, “Should we tell Mina and Hanta we’re going or something?” Midoriya asks shyly.

“We should--” Uraraka gives the answer Midoriya wanted to hear.

“Okay, let me rephrase.” Midoriya clears his throat, “Are we going to tell Mina and Hanta we’re going or are we just gonna watch and laugh.”

“No one’s laughing.” Yaoyorozu tilts her head confused.

“I am, on the inside.” Shoji jokes.

“No you aren’t.” Todoroki deadpans.

“I’m a very jokey guy.” He closes his eyes and shakes his head in an almost taunting manner.

Todoroki rolls his eyes and twiddles a dial on his communicator, bringing it to his mouth. “Hey, Hanta? It’s Todoroki.”

The stationary party couldn’t hear Hanta’s responses to Todoroki, but did notice the fact Hanta was driving with one arm, the other pressed to his face.

“Yeah, we’re going.” Todoroki says like he’s having a one sided conversation with himself, he pauses for a beat. “Yes, now.”

Hanta breaks the circle he was driving in with Mina and pulls to Todoroki’s side. “Hey there.” He beams like he hadn’t just held up three quarters of the party.

Mina stops next to Hanta with a giddy smile on her face and a snowball in her hand, “This shit’s so cool, you can make it into like, little balls.”

Uraraka wondered to herself how in the world those two airheads managed to survive this long without any outside interference.

“We shouldn’t waste anymore time, let’s start off by going twenty five kilometers north, then we can let Yaoyorozu and Midoriya do their thing.” Tsu takes charge, kicking the bike into gear and speeding North.

After little under half an hour had passed, Midoriya calls for the group to stop.

They park underneath a large glacier and dismount accordingly. 

“Remember, due south is the Imperial camp.” Uraraka reminds the two consulars.

Yaoyorozu sits down, hands in her lap. She makes rings on each hand with her finger and thumb, focusing on her breathing and silencing her mind.

Midoriya sits opposite her, his stance different, he places folds his hands together, wrapping his left palm around his right fist and holding them in front of his chest. He shares an expression with his master, blank and focused.

They sit, unmoving, for five minutes until they both wake at the same time.

Midoriya helps Yaoyorozu stand, turning to face the six expectant souls.

“I sensed you guys, a large group south (the Imperials), an equally large camp North-East of here, an encampment North-West (but more west than North) and a party of eight speeding towards that camp.” Midoriya closes his eyes as he speaks, pointing to the people he can ‘see’.

“Out of the eight Midoriya mentioned, all of them are rather powerful hence why we were drawn to them. Only five are force sensitive with four being heavily trained.” Yaoyorozu elaborates.

“Can you sense the side of the force they’re on?” Todoroki asks.

“Not really, I just see the life the force gives, their soul I guess.” Yaoyorozu explains, pacing the glacier.

“Well, they gonna Jedi or Sith right? I don’t know of anyone else that trains folks in the force.” Hanta shrugs.

“He’s right, did you have a backup team or something?” Uraraka agrees with Hanta

“Now that you mention it, something about their auras felt… off…” Midoriya admits, “Even from a distance, they felt corrupted.”

Yaoyorozu’s brows furrow in confusion, but not fear. “I’m almost convinced we’re being raced by the Sith. We should head North-West-ish to the camp, we can’t waste our time.”

The atmosphere became tense and much more serious with Yaoyorozu’s wording. Even through the spiteful cold, the air of sincerity still lingered.

“We need to get a move on then.” Shoji breaks the silence, almost running towards the speeder.

“Momo, can you give us bearing?” Tsu asks, Yaoyorozu slightly taken aback by the use of her given name.

“Sure,” She takes the compass off of Tsu “310 degrees.”

Tsu takes back the compass with the new bearing, thanking Yaoyorozu and waiting for everyone to ready up so they could go.

The party speeds into the snow again, this time supposedly racing Sith, untapped territory for basically everyone.

“Do you know how far away the camp is?” Uraraka calls into her communicator, the question directed to Midoriya or Yaoyorozu.

“We can’t measure distance, only bearing and the strength of the force creature. We have a range but things on the outskirts of that range appear just as powerful as if they were in front of us.” Midoriya explains over the com.

“So we just ride until we find the camp?” Uraraka asks.

“I think so.” Midoriya calls back.

In the end the camp was one hundred kilometers away, the overall journey taking more than an hour.

The second they arrive anxiety sets in, the base seemingly empty once more. Now they had something else to worry about however.

Thankfully there was no sight of another party, although they knew better than to brush this off as there not being another party in the first place.

“Can you see where that other party is, Master?” Todoroki asks Yaoyorozu who shakes her head.

“I’d need time we don’t, have. We need to secure those slaves before anything happens to them.”

Todoroki nods, everyone else starts gearing up, loading pistols and warming up ligaments.

During this preparation phase, the feint rumble of engines can be heard in the distance. The sound gets louder and starts to close in on the increasingly wary team.

"Heads up, I think we got company." Hanta warns the others although everyone already knew.

Uraraka attempts to pinpoint the sound, constantly shifting her gunpoint. Tsu cocks her own gun, placing it against her shoulder and looking down the scope, left hand ready to grab a knife.

Hanta begins pressing gauntlet buttons, pulling a pistol but leading with the tech. Mina turns on her boots, pulling her dual pistols and crossing them over one another.

Lightsabers were yet to be drawn, but Shoji and Todoroki's hands were hovering over the death-sticks.

Yaoyorozu centres herself, assessing her surroundings and taking mental notes of the items she could throw around. Midoriya presses his fists together and the force warps around him, making him undetectable to the human eye.

As soon as the right take battle stances, out of the snow come six rental speeders. The figures on them are unidentifiable yet they all seem male.

The pack leader skids to a halt once within one hundred metres, jumping off the speeder and executing a barrel role. He drops some holo-cover and from his back, grabs a heavy assault rifle. The marks on his armour weren't visible at face value but his hair was clearly blue.

Uraraka changes positions with Yaoyorozu to point her gun directly at his head, the standoff beginning.

In similar fashion, the other speeders screech to a halt. Figures dismounting left, right and centre.

Weirdly, there were only seven present as opposed to the eight Midoriya and Yaoyorozu had sensed.

Again, everyone was working by themselves, only focusing on one opponent in front of them and their movements.

Now, lightsabers were being drawn. Their opposition drew first, the light blonde man in front of Shoji displaying two bright red lightsabers with the man facing Todoroki drawing a yellow one. The Sith facing Yaoyorozu draws a sparkling purple one, much to her confusion.

The Jedi follow suit, familiar mismatched blue and green of Shoji and another two singular blue units. Midoriya of course still nowhere to be found.

Hanta found himself matched against a face that triggered something in him but he couldn't place and Mina was up against another female bounty hunter.

Next to the blue haired man came a man wearing the same uniform as him, not bothering to drop cover and focusing on Tsu.

Antsy silence shifts onto the battlefield, everyone ready to be attacked at any given moment.

After thirty seconds of heart wrenching expectations, the dual-sabed marauder strikes Shoji who blocks swiftly. 

This causes a chain reaction of shots fired and lightsabers hitting lightsabers, chaos befalling the battleground.

Master Yaoyorozu blocks a blow from the Sith lord with a single purple saber, pushing him back a few feet with the force as she scrambles for ground.

“What’re you? A Juggernaut?” She asks him to which he laughs, flipping shiney blonde hair out of his violet eyes.

“Moi? Oh no mademoiselle, I couldn’t bring myself to do such grunt-work.” He scoffs, at her notion.

“So, pride led you down your dark path?” Yaoyorozu connects the dots, prying inside her opponent’s mind.

“That and the fact there’s more power in it for me.” He admits, his left arm being covered with electricity that he directs at Yaoyorozu.

She meets it with her own use of the force, shielding herself from the lightning.

“You’re a sorcerer, then.” Yaoyorozu mutters to herself, a sorcerer being the mirror of her own class.

“That I am, and he’s an assassin.” The man smirks, Yaoyorozu is overcome with confusion until she’s met with a double-bladed purple lightsaber that was about to strike her.

Instead, the blow is parried by Midoriya’s green lightsaber. Midoriya throws a young man with black hair back into the snow, leaping into a one on one with him to save Yaoyorozu.

“Leave her alone.” He scowls.

“What a maddening turn of events.” He grins evilly.

“Who are you to make such a battle so unfair?” Midoriya and the man walk around a makeshift ring slowly, guarding themselves and watching for the moves of the other.

“You may refer to me as Tsukoyomi for the time being. I may tell you my real name once I’m prepared to kill you, child.” He runs at Midoriya, a flurry of purple and black.

Todoroki and his sparring partner have their lightsabers block and part rapidly, the young man he was facing had rage in his naturally black eyes.

He leaps away using the force, putting quickly closing distance between him and the young sith.

“Rage is not the answer, you can find power in more benevolent mediums!” He tries to make the young sith see his version of reason.

“Put a sock it and fight me.” The blonde growls, rolling his wrist and kicking up snow.

Todoroki does as he demands, rushing the man all the while reciting the Jedi code under his breath.

“The code? What’re you scared you’ll forget it or something?” He taunts.

“I can’t afford to go down my father’s path.” Todoroki confesses, taking a deep breath and running into him again.

Shoji was unable to get a swing in edgeways with the way this guy was fighting, the sheer bloodthirst he was up against scared him. But you best believe Shoji would never admit that.

“What? You pussy or something, big guy?” He taunts, having Shoji only block with one of his weapons, bringing the other into his side, or he would’ve provided the Sith lord didn’t dodge.

“No, you’re just pretty intense.” Shoji laughs him off, out of breath from not only the fight, but the cold too.

“That’s the way I like it, you gonna bow now? Or do I have to beat that shit outta you?” The blonde laughs maniacally. Observant eyes who were watching couldn’t help but draw the correlation between the three sith’s hair colouring, although it was likely unrelated.

“You’ll find me slightly harder to break than most Jedi you’ve made bow.” Shoji bends his knees, his lightsabers burning surrounding snow.

The Sith lord rushes him once again, leaping into the air and spinning in a whirlwind of red.

Tsu continues taking shots at the red haired armoured man, all the shots she hit bounce off of him and he was yet to graze her. 

Uraraka was by her side, delivering precise fire to the blue haired man also under cover.

“I need you to hold your fire for me.” Tsu instructs her.

“Why?” Uraraka asks.

“Just do it!” Tsu leaps into the air past Uraraka’s cover, injecting herself with a syringe of sorts and disappearing from view with a shimmer of hexagons, landing behind her confused enemy’s cover, tripping up the blue haired forcing the effect to wear off prematurely and stealing his holo-cover.

She takes her knife from its holster and holds it against the red one’s neck, her knees either side of him. 

Mina smirks at her opponent, a short-ish purple haired woman with dual pistols, both of which were pointed at the resident pink haired bounty hunter.

Mina hits a button on her gauntlet sending her flying with a short boost of fire and fuel, allowing her to unload a volley of bullets into the girl who instead drops her own holo-cover to survive Mina’s blasts.

“Hey! That’s cheatin’ ya lil bitch!” Mina pouts, dropping from her elevated position aided by gravity.

“I thought anything went for you bounty hunters!” She calls back, focusing both her guns on Mina and unloading a similar volley.

Mina dodges all of them with a surprising amount of difficulty.

“Maybe you should just give up ya skank!” The woman yells the insult at Mina who takes genuine offence, beginning to peg snowballs at her attacker.

“Really?” She asks herself confused.

Hanta exchanges pistol fire with a man who he had most definitely met before, not bothering to let this dwell on him too much.

“What’s ya name?” Hanta calls to him.

“Why’d ya wanna know?” The man calls back. The voice was definitely familiar, as was the flowing leather jacket with black lightning bolts either side.

“I like my opponents to die with a lil’ honour, to me that means I know their names.” Hanta explains.

“Hah, I feel the same way, buddy! I’m Chargebolt.” He smiles, giving his pseudonym freely. Hanta couldn’t help but feel like he had heard the name before.

“Cool name! I’m Cellophane.” Hanta compliments him whilst trying to put a few more holes in his chest.

“Cellophane?” Chargebolt stops, making Hanta stop as well. Although his morals weren’t those of a Jedi, he still felt bad shooting a man who’d given up. “Hanta Sero?”

Hanta’s taken aback at the mention of his real name, until he finally recognises the man in front of him. “Denki Kaminari?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo sorry for my like 5 day haitus, I know most people wait longer than that to post but I felt like since I was posting every other day or so I would've been missed. 
> 
> I tried to make each segment 3 chapters long but it hasn't gone that way. Imps & Jedi will finish with 4 chapters with one for interlude. Then I'll write Bakugou and Iida's teams.


	10. Imperials and Jedi - Chapter 4

“Hanta Sero!”

“Denki Kaminari!”

The two rush towards each other, but instead of exchanging shots again, they exchange a big hug. Mina and her opponent noticing and stopping their fights too.

“Guys! We can stop! It’s Hanta’s crew we’re all good!” Denki announces to his allies who give him confused looks as the fighting remains on standstill.

“Yeah! This is Denki! They’re friendlies!” Hanta announces to his side of the fight.

“They’re Sith!” Shoji calls back, gesturing to the angry man who was fighting him less than thirty seconds ago.

“They’re Jedi!” His opponent makes a similar gesture, using the same tone as Shoji.

“Just ‘cause they’re Sith don’t make ‘em bad people!” Hanta argues.

“Yeah!” Denki agrees with Hanta.

“I might as well be the wet blanket and announce that: yes, we are.” Tsukoyomi raises his hand from almost fifty meters away.

“See?” A shrill voice that could only belong to Midoriya pipes up.

“Look, maybe we can use them!” Denki explains. “They can lead us to Darth Shigiraki!”

“Darth Shigiraki?” Yaoyorozu repeats the name, “I know him! Isn’t he the deserter? Why do you want him?”

“So I can beat that blue-haired fucker in battle and secure his place on the dark council! That’s why.” Shoji’s opponent yells at her. “I want the whole worthless galaxy to know me as the one who brings down those shits calling themselves the league.”

“Darth Katsuki?” Uraraka asks, baffled.

“Yeah, the one n’ only. Who’re you?” He asks her.

“I’m one of the imperial agents in your personal division, Ochaco Uraraka!” She tries to jolt his non-existent memory of her.

“Yeah I don’t have memory of you.” He tells her bluntly.

“Guys, guys, please!” Denki tries to break up the chances of another fight breaking out. “What’re you Jedi doing?”

“We’re tracking some slaves, we believe they’re here, in this encampment.” Todoroki tells Denki.

"Slaves? Oh yeah, I have two agents and a pair of bounty hunters tryna track those shits down." Darth Katsuki recalls.

At this point in time lightsabers were being sheathed, and guns holstered. A conversation had begun with the previous enemies.

"That was us, sir. Hence why Ochaco asked if you knew her." Tsu informs him, a brief wave of understanding flashing across his face.

"And Hanta's one of your bounty hunters." He asks, trying to get a bigger picture than the one he had.

"Him and Pinky, sir." Tsu nods.

"And you, blue hair." Todoroki points to the man who had only just recovered from Tsu's kick. "You're strike commander Tenya Iida, right?"

"Uhm, yes. That is indeed me." He calls back to Todoroki, slightly confused.

"I remember you, five years ago on Ord Mantel we fought together." Todoroki elaborates. "You were the head of operations that fight if memory serves."

"I'm sorry master Jedi, but I don't recall you." Iida sits up in the snow, fixing his crooked glasses.

“That’s okay, I’m sure we all look the same to you.” Todoroki sighs.

“What about me, you remember me?” The red haired man pinned under Tsu asks like a puppy.

“...no.”

“With all due respect, master. Shouldn’t we get back to the mission?” Todoroki’s combatant walks over to Darth Katsuki.

“You bet your ass we have. Let’s show Shigiraki what we’re made of.” Katsuki gives a manic laugh, the growl in his voice making him seem very menacing.

“Excuse me, but if you’re headed into the camp, we need to go with you.” Yaoyorozu stands up, brushing herself down of snow.

“Why?”

“The slaves, sir.” Tsu reminds him.

Katsuki stops for a minute and has a long think, seemingly weighing his options. “Apprentice.”

The blonde looks up at the mention of his title, waiting for orders.

“What’re we gonna do?” He asks him, hands behind his back in a leering fashion.

“Is that a pop-quiz type question, or are you asking your student to decide your next move for you?” Shoji scoffs, Katsuki glaring at him.

“If this party really does have goals that can only be achieved here, we can give them the slaves or whatever in exchange for their manpower fighting Shigiraki’s league; Master.” The apprentice proposes.

Again, Katsuki thinks of this, looking everyone over. “What’ll we do once they help us kill the traitor?”

“We should let them live.” The apprentice decides, much to the surprise of the Jedi and Imperial faction and even more surprising it seems to Darth Katsuki. “Half of them are our own soldiers, right? Makes no sense hurting them. And if we can persuade the Jedi to work with us in the future we’ve made assets.”

Katsuki smirks, "okay, let's do that."

"What are you on about? Do you seriously think you can just, talk about killing us so cockily?" Yaoyorozu huffs, frowning at his words.

"Yes." Midoriya frowns, placing a hand in Yaoyorozu's shoulder "yes he does." 

No one was prepared to ask what Midoriya meant by his sour tone as they were more concerned with the foreign people who were yet to prove their loyalty.

"So wait, what's happening?" The sparkly sith asks again.

"No idea." Mina shrugs.

"We're going into the camp, apparently." The red haired man tells them.

"I suggest you stand up, Darth Katsuki will likely not wait for you." Tsukoyomi brushes himself off, eyeing the new friends.

Confusion was alive and well as they all follow Darth Katsuki into the camp, Katsuki presses himself against the outer walls of the camp.

“Master, we don’t have a plan!” His apprentice whisper yells at him.

“Yeah we do, walk in there and beat the shit out of the fresh prince of Bel Air.” Katsuki responds.

“Bel Air?” Yaoyorozu repeats the last bit. “That like Belsaavas?”

“That’s what I said, you dumb woman.” Katsuki snaps, no one willing to be the one to call him out.

“At least let the Jedi Shadow and me scout the area, we may yet find something.” Tsukoyomi offers.

“I’m a powertech, support class. Lemme gather intel or whatever.” Mina offers.

“I’m one of the galaxy’s best star fighters, I think I can maybe use that. Somehow.” Denki points to himself triumphantly.

“Yeah and I’m a mechanic for the Republic military, real manly guys doing real manly work.” The red haired man exclaims.

“I’m one of the Imperial military’s best navigators… although how that’ll help is kinda beyond me.” Tsu shuts herself down as she proposes the idea.

“See? Keeping them alive was a good idea, Master.” The apprentice smiles.

“Maybe.” He scowls. “Okay, Fumikage and green hair stelth up and waltz in there, pink hair and shitty hair get some intel for us, Commander Asui and Denki just sit there.”

At his command a portable listening post was made out of a portable radio and some magnets with both stealth force users cloaking themselves and walking inside.

Tsukoyomi and Midoriya had made an arrangement that they would curl up surrounding snow into a ball when they wanted to other’s attention.

The two weren’t positive as to what they were looking for just yet, but they had both assumed they were figuring out patrol patterns or something similar.

The camp was essentially a low rendered circle, the thing too large to be called a polygon but was not refined enough to be defined as a circle.

Around the inside edge is a walkway that appears to be freshly walked on, it was definitely being patrolled regularly.

Inside the outer rings were quite a few houses, or buildings that appeared to be houses at the very least, around the houses were of course the slaves. 

About 250 of them by the looks of things, all freezing their asses off in the courtyard.

On an elevated platform rests three figures, one masked, one wearing relatively light armour save a metal neck brace and one with shoulder length blue hair.

Midoriya stops in his tracks when two men approach him going around the rings to meet him, one much shorter than the other.

“Patrol is boooooring.” The shorter one whines, he was blonde with very messy hair and some wispy hairs making up a scruffy beard. He was wearing eyeliner that darted inward towards his nose, two sleek lightsabers at his waist. He was wearing a hooded robe with his hood down and light armour everywhere else.

“Would you shut up? I know it’s boring but we need to make sure no one swipes our acolytes.” The taller one snarls, telling off his companion much like a parent would a child. He had black spikey hair that looked like a dyed version of Darth Katsuki’s signature blonde explosion, under his eyes and around his mouth looking like stylised burnt skin. He wears the same uniform as his friend only his own hood was up, at his side a single long double-bladed saber.

Midoriya draws the snow at his feet in telepathically with the hope Tsukoyomi could see it, following the pair.

“You make it bearable, but I still think Shigiraki’s being too paranoid.” The shorter blonde pouts, resting his head on the shoulder of his friend and pulling his arms around the taller assassin.

“He’s just being a good leader, he’s on bad terms with the Jedi, the Sith as well as those Meta Liberation guys. We're lucky we don't have to worry about Overhaul and his death gang or whatever they called themselves anymore." The assassin defends their leader, hugging his partner back. "What I'm trying to say is, he’s got a lot on his plate.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a snowball form by itself on the ground connecting the outer patrol ring with the start of the slave occupations. From a stationary position the snowball rolls towards one of the houses which Midoriya takes as a signal for him to follow the snowball.

He enters the house, looking around and seeing its function as an armoury. Midoriya looks around quickly and exits stealth to examine all the practice sabers and armour more closely. He hears an uncloaking sound behind him and feels a hand drag him up to face Tsukoyomi.

“What are you doing?! Just uncloaking like that.” He lectures the young shadow in a loud whisper.

“I checked first!” Midoriya whispers back.

“Sure you did. What do you think of this all?” He changes the subject.

“It makes sense why they’d have this many practice sabers, all the slaves are force sensitive and these Sith clearly want to train them all up.” Midoriya deducts.

“I’d like to correct you, these aren’t Sith. They’re followers of Darth All for One, he broke away from our order a while ago. Your master may have called his successor a deserter but that’s frankly untrue. The league are a different galaxy entirely.” Tsukoyomi educates the young Shadow who pulls his notebook from his belt to jot the information down, earning a very weird look.

“This uniform isn’t Sith then?” Midoriya touches the cloth, running his hand through the red-ish black patterns.

“No, what I’m more concerned with is the sheer amount of lightsabers they’ll need for these slaves.” Tsukoyomi takes mental notes of how many practice sabers were in the crate in front of him.

“No one said they needed to arm the slaves with lightsabers. You give them such a deadly weapon with next to no training they’ll wage war.” Midoriya takes more notes.

“You make a point, green one.” He folds his arms, looking around at the gear, wondering where they got it all from. 

They turn around when they both hear scampering near them, seeing a small child, about six or so. Her red eyes go wide with fear at the sight of two unknown force users.

Midoriya practically leaps into her with his finger pressed to his mouth making frantic shushing noises.

"You don't look like a member of the league. Your robes are brown and white!" She whispers, touching his clothes.

"That's because I'm not. We're here to save you and your friends, but I need you to show my order's virtues of patience and hope." Midoriya pets her blue wavy haired head.

"We're? I can only see you." She tells him confused.

"That's not true Tsukoyomi's right behi--" Midoriya stops when he turns around to see nothing but a small amount of purple mist to signify an emergency force cloak. "--nd me, nevermind."

"Do you have a blue lightsaber? I want a purple one or a yellow one. Do you think they're cool colours?" She rambles, changing the subject excitedly.

"You need to be quiet! (Yes I think they're cool but mine's green) I'm on a secret mission and I need you to be quiet." Midoriya smirks at her and she nods her head vigorously.

"I'll be quiet now, goodbye Mr green man!" She scurries off, content with her secret mission. "I'm Eri by the way."

"Jedi Izuku Midoriya.” He smiles as she runs away.

Once she’s gone he feels a harsh strike come down on his head. “You idiot! You’d tell a child of our mission.”

“Relax! I didn’t see you trying to help!” Midoriya hisses at the raven themed Sith.

“That was the point ‘Jedi Izuku Midoriya’.” Tsukoyomi throws shade.

“I don’t hear you giving me a real name ‘lord of darkness’.” Midoriya translates the name Tsukoyomi.

“You don’t need to hear my real name. Now are we finished here, or do we want to check out more?” He sighs, looking out the small window in the hut, seeing no more than three more houses.

“I think we should go back, rally our troops so to speak.” Midoriya suggests.

“I second that.” Tsukoyomi waves a hand in front of his body, disappearing from Midoriya’s view.

Midoriya hits his fists together and also disappears, walking out of the house with no contest and heading for the entrance again, being cut off at the entrance by another patrolling pair who’re hand in hand.

The girl has blonde hair done in messy dual-buns, her hood was down and by the looks of things she only had one lightsaber. She’s holding hands with a guy wearing a mask and his hood up. He also had a single lightsaber by his side.

Midoriya waited until they had passed by for him to exit the compound. He meets up with the others 100 metres away from the camp, seeing Tsukoyomi already there.

"He's there with a masked guy and someone with a collar." Tsukoyomi tells the party, Midoriya only catching the tail end of the information swap.

"I dunno who the mask is meant to be, but the neck brace is likely his right-hand man, Kurogiri." Katsuki paces in the snow.

"There are two patrolling pairs, both seem to be couples (although I don't wanna assume anything) and all four are armed with lightsabers." Midoriya joins the conversation with information he found relevant.

"Only two patrols of two? How many slaves were there?" Strike commander Iida asks.

"All 250." Tsukoyomi shakes his head. "We found weaponry for all of them."

"That's disturbing, how do they plan to supply 250 lightsabers? Or more counting the marauders and assassins." Yaoyorozu hugs herself at the grim thought.

"Please, cherie. Do not drag our order's name down by aligning us with the filth in that facility." The purple eyed sith frowns.

"Y'know, I don't exactly care anymore. Those pieces of shit won't see this shitty planet’s next sunrise, y’hear. We’re going in there and ending this man’s career.” Katsuki smirks.


	11. Republic - Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
> 
> Strike Commander Tenya Iida becomes one of the youngest in his troop to achieve the rank.
> 
> Sent on a suicidal rescue mission with a young lieutenant bent on honour and two hired guns with delusions of grandeur. 
> 
> Will he be able to retrieve the priceless McGuffin?
> 
> Or will his team’s lack of numbers ultimately be their downfall?

“Any idea why we’re needed?” Lieutenant Eijiro Kirishima asks, pulling ahead of his commanding officer in a swift stride.

“I’d prefer not questioning our superiors, sometimes the less you know about a mission the better.” Strike commander Tenya Iida explains, his step more of a march than anything else.

“I guess, but those missions aren’t usually given confidentially to only two troopers.” Kirishima adds. “That’s more of a platoon thing”

“I guess you’re right, Lieutenant.” Iida turns into the republic hanger with Kirishima at his tail.

“Do you have your gear or something?”

“Me? No, I didn’t think of that.”

“Yeah, neither did I.”

The pair walks onto the landing area to see Admiral Kan with his hands on his hips and the two knew they were basically in for hell.

“Lieutenant Eijiro Kirishima and Strike Commander Tenya Iida, you’re both late.” He scowls.

Kirishima checks his watch, “We’re late by maybe three minutes.”

“In that three minutes hundreds of people just died around the galaxy, time is relative.” He points an accusatory finger in Kirishima’s direction.

“I do apologise for my lack of punctuality, Admiral Kan.” Iida gives a formal yet quick bow.

“We better get to it before any more time is wasted. We received a distress signal little under an hour ago from one of our distant republic cruisers that happens to be transporting a holocron of incredible value.” Kan paces slowly, “The signal itself was very brief, only showing itself for a minute and a half. But in that minute and a half we were treated to quite the audio livestream, about thirty seconds of republic slander topped off with a lightsaber slash to what appeared to be the system.”

“We need to help the crew then, if there’s sith on that ship they have little hope without aid!” Iida protests.

“Yeah, why just us? We should be sending an entire army to secure this thing?” Kirishima asks annoyed.

“We can identify two voices on the track, we think they’re sith and two sith mounting a surprise attack are borderline unstoppable.” Kan informs them. “We need you two to get on board the ship and locate this holocron, then get out before the sith find you.”

“Aren’t you risking a lot by sending us in by ourselves? Neither of us have stealth skills.” Iida shakes his head.

“That’s why we’ve hired two professionals to help you get the job done.” Kan admits.

“By professionals… You don’t mean smugglers, do you?” Iida hesitates.

“I unfortunately do.”

“That could be cool.” Kirishima smiles enthusiastically.

“No, not cool. Smugglers are lowlifes, they don’t deserve our time!” Iida makes his opinion known as two ships pull into the hanger, one republic issue and one not.

At this moment four people come out of the elevator, one girl with red Jedi robes and long black hair done up in a ponytail and three men. One was very tall with white hair angled over his masked lower face, another was way shorter with messy green hair and the man beside him had his hair two toned, left side red and right side white.

The green haired man is handed the ship’s rap sheet which he awkwardly fumbles, the white haired man taking it off him and looking through the contents.

The doors to the ship in front of Iida and Kirishima swings open to reveal a man and a woman, the man practically throwing himself off the ramp to meet the two.

“Hey guys! I’m Denki Kaminari (but you can call me Denki), the galaxy’s most renowned scoundrel! I’ll be your tech for today and tomorrow and likely the rest of the week!” The blonde wraps his arms around the shoulders of either trooper.

“Admiral Kan, they’re imbeciles.” Iida sobs, six years of intensive training to become an officer and this is where his career has lead him? To have a leather coated smuggler with some sort of black streak in his blonde hair wrapping his arms around Iida’s shoulder?

“Don’t be so harsh, Commander. We just met them!” Kirishima smiles, his teeth as pointy as his hair, probably from his Zabrak heritage.

“He might be a little dumb, but give my husband a chance.” The purple haired woman descends the ramp, ruffling the Denki’s hair and lifting herself onto tip-toes to get there. “Kyoka Jirou, famed gunslinger.”

“You both say you are famed but I’ve never heard your names before.” Iida folds his arms, skeptic of Denki and Jirou.

“There’s a reason for that, we keep our real names private.” Jirou explains.

“Have you heard of Chargebolt?” Denki strikes a pose only to be met with silence and a less than enthusiastic Iida.

It was at this time the second ship began its start up sequence, hovering for a second before passing through the first laser gate and swiftly out through the second too.

“Iida, these are the best we could find, and be damned if we didn’t look.” Kan tells him, “You might not be able to trust them, but I do.”

“C’mon, sir. Give ‘em a chance!” Kirishima smiles, hugging Denki back.

Iida thinks it through in his head, only coming to the single conclusion. “Fine.” He scowls, “But the ship better be clean and not a ‘lovers paradise’.”

“I suppose you two’ll need these.” Kan interrupts, motioning to the two duffle bags behind him that had been completely missed by the troopers.

Iida takes both bags and stops onboard the ship without so much as a thank you to Admiral Kan, mumbling annoyed.

Jirou rolls her eyes and Denki giggles immaturely when they go to board the ship after Iida.

“W-wait a minute!” Kirishima runs after them as the doors close.

In the end he had to dive between the closing gap in the dual vault doors. He falls on the ground with a splat, loose fitting armour points digging it into his body.

“Damn, you okay buddy?” Jirou asks concerned.

Iida drops the bags at his feet in the cock-pit, rummaging through them both to find which one was his.

Iida hears a high-pitched ‘oooo’ from behind him, he turns to see Denki with a lippy smile. “Neat tech.”

“Get off me.” Iida brushed him off his shoulder.

Denki walks away mumbling in a sneery tone of voice, sitting down in the captain’s chair and flicking some switches to get the ship operational.

Iida continues rummaging through his things, finding things like side arms and a large heavy assault rifle which he takes out of the bag to look through the scope and examine the workmanship.

He hears armour scuffing the metal floor in quick shuffles, a chin rests on his shoulder.

“What’s in the bag?” Kirishima whispers in his ear, getting pushed off by Iida.

“You have your own.” He points to the unopened bag resting against the wall.

“How’re you sure that’s mine?”

“You’re a Vanguardian, right? This is a Commando set.” Iida picks up the holo-cover and sidearms, marking the difference between the two sets.

“Oh, well what’s in my bag?” Kirishima tugs at the zip, eager to have it opened

“A Vanguard set, just look for yourself.” Iida grabs the handle of Kirishima’s bag and slides it over the floor to the eager Zabrak.

“What is this, Christmas gift unboxing?” Jirou laughs as she enters the room, placing a hand on Denki’s shoulder and looking out of the cockpit to see the hanger. “The stars look different to what I remember.”

“I’m working on it! Christ, we had to get refueled.” Denki frowns, flipping the last few levers.

“Christ? Christmas?” Iida asks, baffled by the terminology.

Jirou and Denki turn to him after looking at each other confused.

“Where are you from?” Jirou asks.

“Iridonia.” Kirishima answers instead of Iida uninvited, the others glare at him but he continues smiling innocently.

“Coruscant.” Iida answers.

“Coruscant? Either you grew up insanely rich or scary poor.” Jirou points out.

“The former. My mother and father were diplomats, when my brother showed signs of force sensitivity they sent him to Tython to train as a Jedi. I never developed his affinity but I still wanted to do my bit, y’know?” Iida starts his story by starting at his family life, “So I joined the Republic military! I was scarily good at a gun (or so I was told by my supervisors so I was quickly drawn up through the ranks.”

“Yeah, I didn’t wanna be mean but you seem pretty young for a strike commander.” Denki swivels in his chair, grabbing for the joy-stick as the ship hums to life.

“I’m 24.” He confirms.

“Dude, I’m 25 and like five ranks behind you, what the fuck.” Kirishima looks at him in awe.

“Language.” Iida frowns.

“Well, on the original topic, we’re from Earth.” Denki explains, “In the outer-rim.”

“Isn’t that the planet humans originated from?” Iida asks.

“Sure is.” Jirou confirms.

“Hah, weird-ass humans.” Kirishima turns up his nose with a smirk.

“I’ve seen your file, you’re only half Zabrak. You display just as many human features.” Iida argues.

“Better than you full humans!” Kirishima folds his arms and turns his head away with a huff.

“We good to go?” Jirou asks Denki.

“Yup, can you be my nav?” He asks.

“Sure can.” She kisses him on the cheek and gets into the navigator seat, bringing up a map and entering the given coordinates.

“Romance?” Kirishima perks up, sharp teeth forming a smile.

“Go fuck yourself.” Jirou scowls, “He’s my husband, you two are the ones third wheeling.”

“Language!” Iida tells her off.

“Not if it’s a double date!” Kirishima yells back, looking to Iida hopefully.

“Absolutely not.” He deadpans.

“Worth a shot.” Denki jokes.

“No it wasn’t!” Iida sneers.

Denki just laughs, pulling out of the hanger through the dual doors and into space.

He pulls the ship left out to deep space where there were no other public manned ships or republic cruisers.

“By the looks of things, this holocron was on its way to Tython before it was intercepted.” Jirou notes whilst looking over the coordinates and navigation maps.

“It makes sense when you think about it. They were carrying a holocron, right?” Kirishima adds onto her motion.

“Indeed, Tython is the home of the Jedi temple, keepers of relics.” Iida elaborates, “Not to mention that the republic has their fleet less than a parsec away, it wouldn’t take much to stop at the fleet and trade hands with the holocron.”

“You’re right, the ship was travelling from Coruscant actually. It got the holocron itself from Korriban…” Jirou trails off.

Denki loses focus on the flying for a minute when Jirou utters the planet’s name, Iida’s head shooting up from his fiddling with the holo-cover.

“What’s wrong with that?” Kirishima asks, tone hushed as he notices the reaction regarding the planet name.

“Let’s just say that Korriban has two native species: the Korr’slug and the Sith.” Denki mumbles.

“The Sith? But isn’t that like, an order? Not a race.” Kirishima adjusts his sitting, leaning in so he could hear the hushed tones better.

“Where do you think the order came from? The pure bloods were-- are, the most powerful in the galaxy regarding the dark side.” Iida corrects him.

“And they originated on Korriban?” Kirishima asks for confirmation.

“What part of ‘native’ are you having trouble with?” Jirou frowns.

“Okay, okay, got it.” Kirishima holds up his hands, falling back onto the floor in defeat. “So, we’re going to help a republic cruiser transporting a Jedi holocron rescued from a Sith planet to the Jedi temple whilst being tracked by Sith warriors.”

“Yeah, I’m seeing a theme.” Denki scoffs.

“Honestly, Sith are above what I’m willing to deal with. You guys aren’t paying us enough.” Jirou slumps down in her chair.

“Are we going to enter hyperspace yet?” Iida presses, hugging a knee to his chest.

“Sure thing! Kirishima, can you hit the red level behind you? The large one next to the terminal.” Denki instructs, pointing to the panel behind him without turning around.

Kirishima looks over the dials and knobs on the panel behind him, seeing a large red lever next to a terminal like Denki said. The shaft of the lever had a little paper ribbon around it with foreign writing in what seemed like shouty capital letters and messy handwriting. 

“This one?” Kirishima asks. “The one with the writing

Jirou looks over her shoulder, “Yes, just pull it.”

Kirishima shrugs, pulling the lever and getting thrown into the switchboard with the sudden leap in inertia, Iida remained mostly unaffected because of his position, sitting with his back to the wall.

Out of the window Denki and Jirou watch the stars blur around them, the black of space seemingly coming closer to them as their ship warps reality.

When the space around them returns to normal, the main difference outside the window is the large republic cruiser, hundreds of times larger than the smugglers’ ship. The familiar triangular design of the republic cruiser filling the four’s collective conscience, yet something felt wrong.

The cruiser wasn’t making noise, almost like its engines had been manually turned off. To add onto that, the ship was on an angle, not uncommon when traversing a space with no gravity, yet the tilt seemed unintentional; like a bi-product of something larger.

Finally, the ship didn’t seem to be going anywhere. It was actually moving, of course. But it was more a drift than the result of any inside input to the navigation system.

It would take quite a bit to realise anything was wrong if you weren’t explicitly looking for it, but even then the eerie feel of death lingered the non existent air, silence filling the cabin.

A large gulp could be heard from Denki as he pushes forwards on his pilot column, pulling the ship further towards the cruiser.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for not writing and the short chapter (2300 words), but I have exam block all this week and I'm barely managing. 
> 
> I love this story and this au and you better bet your ass I'm continuing the second I have time.
> 
> I might have to call like a fortnight's haitus and before I write more I'll go back through and start formatting my chapters that are currently up instead.
> 
> I love you all and thanks for your continued support!
> 
> ~~ Genna Bella


	12. Republic - Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just realised I missed a perfect opportunity to make Mina a pink Twi'lek

Denki’s ship pulls into the cruiser’s dock easily and smoothly.

Upon turning off the engine, the four sit in silence. Unfortunately, this silence was just as ambient as anything else. 

“We… should get moving.” Iida coughs.

“I guess so…” Kirishima coughs, his voice hoarse from the suffocating silence that had been held up until recently.

Kirishima and Iida swing the bags holding their gear over their shoulders, Denki and Jirou checking their gear as well with Denki making doubly sure the ship was locked and off.

“You have the pass key?” Jirou asks Iida who nods in response.

“Do you know where our holocron is?” Denki asks.

“I do indeed.” Iida whispers, the distinct feeling they’re being watched creeping up the back of his neck. “Does anyone else feel… uncomfortable?”

“Yes.” Jirou responds, the one worded answer giving all the evidence her statement needed. The usually chipper Denki was very on edge, his right hand dancing over his blaster constantly. The puppy-like alien lieutenant was also completely different, his features jumpy and antsy, a slight slouch was to be found in his step.

More silence follows them in the elevator up to the bridge on the 16th floor, as soon as the doors open the stale smell of death and a sight to match fills their senses. Bodies line the hall, easily three scores just littering the bridge as far as the four could see. All of them displaying telltale cylindric burn signs.

Jirou gags, turning to face the elevator again with Denki placing a hand on his poor wife’s back.

Of course on the other end of the spectrum, Iida and Kirishima had been trained for such situations. However that didn’t make it any easier.

The lights on the bridge in front of them were flickering ominously and the bridge itself slightly wonky and tilted to the right side due to an apparent hiccup with the anti-gravity.

“Stop.” Kirishima gives the command that everyone else obeys.

He rummages through his bag, pulling a large gun and a few booster med-kits, armouring up in standard procedure right then and there in the middle of the bridge.

Iida follows suit as it was a good idea, it wasn’t preordained they wouldn’t find Sith here even though if that was what they encountered they would be dead in minutes.

“You can never be too cautious, huh.” Jirou jokes.

“I think you can… but not here.” Denki shrugs, trailing off his sentence, hugging himself. “Is it colder to you?”

“Yeah, now that you mention it--” Jirou looks around, seeing the vents around them closed. “You think the heating’s been turned off?” 

“That would make sense, was it just turned off?” Iida looks up to the vents. “We won’t last very long without warmth, we should get going.”

“I didn’t notice anything but if the heating was turned off our oxygen supply is probably low too.” Kirishima adds.

“We really need to get out of here, then.” Denki’s expression twists into that of mild panic.

“How much longer do you think we have?” Iida asks.

Denki pulls some kind of measurement tool from his utility belt, “I’d call it at 15 minutes. We should get going sooner though.”

“So in other words we don’t have time for this conversation.” Kirishima affirms, beginning to shiver like Jirou.

“The holocron should be in the officer’s cargo hold the fifteenth door to our left.” Iida explains, bringing up a localised holo-map.

“Let’s go, time isn’t on our side.” Jirou hurries the others along, almost sprinting down the bridge past numerous doors and of course dead bodies.

The others run after her, almost running into her due to the slight slant of the ship into the bow when she stops.

Jirou runs her fingers over the lettering of 15 on the indented metal surface, the cool of the metal passing through her gloves and numbing her fingers.

"Hey doof, can you get this open?" She raps her knuckles on the solid metal door.

"Is that a question?" Denki laughs, cracking his knuckles (which echoes down the hall) and taking out a large electronic looking kit. He presses a few buttons and holds the contraption up to the door, it latches on like a spider and starts a slicing procedure overseen by Denki.

Once it’s complete, Iida and Kirishima forward inside, sweeping the area quickly and finding nothing another body slumped over the chair.

The room was a messy office, the surroundings grey and lifeless with miscellaneous paper litter strewn across the floor by an outer force.

Iida checks the body whilst keeping his gun trained on the dead man’s head.

“Can anyone see it?” Kirishima sifts through filing cabinets.

Denki flips a pair of high tech glasses onto his eyes, fiddling with some buttons on the sides, “I’m trying to trace its energy signature, it’s kinda hard though, almost like it doesn’t exist.”

“Maybe it doesn’t and Admiral Kan has just decided to send us to our deaths.” Kirisima squats, delivering the somewhat profound yet insanely dumb theory.

“If that were the case, we would’ve just been court martialed. To go to this length just to write us off, doesn’t it seem like too much effort?” Iida pokes holes in his theory.

“Y’know maybe there’s an invisible camera crew around us, filming us to put on television and this is all just a sick joke.” Denki throws in his own, even dumber theory.

“It wouldn’t make sense, hiring us just to send us on a suicide mission.” Jirou points out, “If they weren’t serious about this, they would’ve taken a different approach for sure.”

“She’s right, either the holocron is here, or the holocron was taken.” Iida mentally thanks whatever god existed for some level of sanity in the form of Jirou to balance the pure idiocy of Denki and Kirishima.

“I’m gonna bet ‘taken’.” Kirishima huffs, down on his hands and knees to find whatever he thought he was looking for.

“You think it’ll be on the floor?” Jirou looks at him confused.

“Maybe under all this paper?” Kirishima answers, unsure of himself even.

“Get up, Lieutenant.” Iida gives him a soft kick, earning a yelp and making the poor zabrak stand up.

“Sorry, sir.” He coughs, standing up and dusting himself off absentmindedly.

“If we can move on, maybe we can find it somewhere else?” Jirou suggests.

“And where exactly would we look next?” Iida asks her.

“I don’t think we have time to check more locations, the inside temperature is dropping to dangerous levels.” Denki presses some buttons on his gauntlet, bringing up an interface with various measurements. “If we’re going to get out at all, we need to do it pretty much now.”

“Dammit, it’ll be a mission failure then!” Kirishima stresses.

“Some missions just do end in failure, that’s a risk every mission holds.” Iida instructs the others. “Let’s get out of here.”

Iida was surprised when he was met with no competition, the others just walking out of the room with a sigh. Iida felt bad because he knew how important holocrons were, to lose one was a massive blow to the Jedi order.

The party, led by Jirou, break out into a full on run back to the hanger. They would have anyway if Jirou hadn’t stopped about six doors down.

Confused, the others gather around her when she points directly down the hole to a single woman propped against the wall with another cylindrical hole in her torso.

“I thought four was more than enough to get the job done… but you don’t seem like sith…” She mutters, clearly panicked, terrified and in pain. “Are you here to help?”

The four all share glances with one another, they were almost certain none of them had noticed a wounded woman on their way to the fifteenth door, much less heard her cries.

“Hey, babe. We aren’t here to hurt you, yes we’re here to help.” Jirou stumbles down the bridge to meet her, kneeling down and placing a hand on her cold body.

“Are you here for the holocron?” She asks, not moving anything but her face.

Iida couldn’t shake the hunch there was something off about her, he buries it though on account of how mean it would seem if he were to call her out on being wounded. Something told him it wouldn’t fly with his team mates.

“Yes but we can take you to our medbay on our ship-- we can help you.” Denki kneels beside her.

As if on cue the ship creaks like it was suddenly being affected by gravity. The utterence of their situation slamming them in the chest again.

“They plotted a course for the sun, they don’t want the holocron back they wanna destroy it…” She gasps in pain. “They’re likely still on the ship but not for long, you need to save the data.”

“Is it still in the officer’s hold?” Kirishima asks, of course this question was pointless seeing as they were just there, but their dismissal of the area could still mean they may have overlooked something.

“No, they put it in the command station where they were sure it’d be destroyed.” She explains, “go, run! I’m dead anyway just--”

“You don’t have to say anything, I understand. Do you want me to make it quick-- or, quicker?” Iida nods, offering euthanasia.

The woman closes her eyes for a moment, a single tear rolling down her cheek. Everyone looks at him with a mixture of shock and disgust on their faces.

“Iida! How could you?” Jirou gasps in horror.

“Yeah, what the fuck man? That’s like the least honourable thing ever.” Kirishima takes her side.

“No, he’s right. Just shoot me, I don’t wanna let asphyxiation be my cause of death when my comrades were all slaughtered.” She agrees, closing her eyes like she was welcoming her demise.

Iida doesn’t need to be told twice to oblige, grabbing Denki’s pistol from his belt (much to his surprise) and pulling the trigger without a second thought.

The girl falls to her right, landing on the floor with a thud and Iida gives a bewildered Denki back his blaster. “Dude… why?” He asks, almost welling up with tears.

“Iida, you just killed her.” Kirishima whispers, rapidly losing his respect. “Sir, you just killed her!”

“I can’t even take you seriously now. I knew you were stuck up but fuck this.” Jirou shakes her head, her hand finding itself interwoven with Denki’s.

“It was mercy, and now thanks to her we have a mission to do.” Iida deadpans, turning away and walking towards the elevator. “Kirishima, I assume you understand.”

“I do, Sir.” Kirishima mutters, grabbing his bag again and walking towards Iida. 

He was a soldier, he should’ve known something like this would happen. But to have Iida shoot the poor girl so easily, there had to be something else going on there. 

He hadn’t actually known Iida that long, but from what he could tell the commander was not above pulling rank which was what he did in a way.

In another way, obeying Iida felt weird seeing as Kirishima was one year older. The army taught him to respect his superiors, but for some reason he felt like Iida could be the youngest there.

“Don’t turn your back on us you cowards!” Jirou screams, distraught.

“Kirishima, I thought you were cool.” Denki scowls, his words weirdly hurting the young Vanguardian.

“You’re getting paid to do this, I thought that would be enough for you to follow me into this elevator.” Iida says, “You want to get out of here, right? Now we have hope to complete this mission.”

The way Iida phrased his sentences made him sound like an unempathetic, manipulatory robot playing to someone’s emotions.

Jirou and Denki look at each other with a frown, following after Iida with the metal on their boots being the only sound heard by the Iida and Kirishima as they walk over to the elevator.

Kirishima hits the button that would take them to the command center, the warmth of the bodies in the elevator (the live ones that is) heating the party to the point they felt cold again, instead of just numb.

Denki checks his statistics again, a worried expression flashes across his face. The temperature was coming in at -2 degrees celsius, the oxygen supply was limited to five minutes among four. Of course that was an average and in reality they had little over twenty minutes. 

Iridonia doesn’t run on oxygen, but instead carbon dioxide. This meant that Kirishima acted like a plant, whenever he were to breath in he sucked out the carbon dioxide in the air, his respiratory system replacing it with oxygen.

With only two full humans, one human that read 96% full on Denki’s scale and a zabrak that read less than 40% (Denki approximated it at 32%) the plant effect Kirishima implemented was not even remotely enough to uphold the team. On top of him having two hearts, but that was neither here nor there.

Once the elevator doors swing open to the top floor, they see the command center in front of them. There are, of course, bodies everywhere and in the captain’s chair sits a light blonde man tossing a small holocron up in the air repeatedly like a ball.

Their holocron. 

On either side of him are two more blondes, the one on his left clad in heavy armour holding a datapad, his hair more a single flat tone and his eyes a natural black. On his right is one wearing gushing purple and black robes, his hair shining in the non existent light and his eyes a vibrant purple.

The four take a few steps away from the elevator before deducing that was a bad idea, and they now had no means of immediate escape.

“Weren’t there four? The lady Iida killed said so.” Denki remembers, counting the three sith over again.

“There are four of us alright.” The middle man smirks, a fourth man places a hand on Kirishima’s shoulder making him jump in fear with a small yelp. “I thought you ‘pubs were fearless! I swear all I want is for some competent fucking challengers, ‘that too much to ask universe?”

The man behind Kirishima takes a few steps back from the four, blocking off the elevator escape. Denki eyeing the raven haired Sith up and down with a sneer.

“We need the holocron, give it to us and we’ll be on our respective ways.” Iida straightens himself up placing his hands behind his back, holding his chin up with some level of authority.

“You tryna pull rank on me?” The middle guffaws. “I’ll enjoy tearing you a new one!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still not feeling brilliant--
> 
> I have an inkling I'm beginning to fall out of love with the story, not to say I won't finish it, I just managed to find another story I want to work on a bit more.
> 
> I'm too far in to quit now, though! You bet your ass I'll find a way to finish, I already know how I'm gonna end it and how I'm gonna get there, I just really need to find the rest of my umph to write it.
> 
> I predict it'll be another 20k words (from this chapter, I'm about 3k words ahead in my google doc) but seeing as this was the last republic chapter I don't have hopes it'll be anything over that.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me though! I mean like the two people who read it that is, Mezoismyspiritanimal and Kreati_Jr but hey, that's part of the fun.
> 
> ~~Genna_Bella


End file.
